A small-town boy from Aligarh from the owner of a billion-dollar company, Vijay Shekhar Sharma has taught that every human being can attain heights through hard work and talent. Vijay Sharma is renowned for his achievement of a billion-dollar company, “Paytm”. Let’s plunge in and peek into his life story, how we started from 10 rupees in a pocket to 3 million dollars in the marketplace.
Paytm stands as a huge company in India, and some of us are not aware of the pitfalls, struggles behind the success of the man. Vijay Shekhar Sharma born on 8 July in a small village of Aligarh district, Uttar Pradesh. Born in the middle-class family, being a father as a school teacher while mother as a homemaker.
Early Education:
Vijay Shekhar finished his secondary education at the age of 14. His entire education has been through Hindi due to which he didn’t know to read and write English, which was not easy for him. Talented and outstanding students in his school years lagged in college life due to poor command over English. By the time he joined college, he was just 15; he faced challenges to deal with intense ragging and insults. Vijay was passionate about learning English; he read many newspapers and magazines to improve his grasp over the language. His reading journey introduced him to Yahoo founder Mr Sabir Bhatia and Netscape founder Marc Andressen. They became an inspiration for him and eventually his interest widened in the vast world of Silicon Valley.
He dreamed of working in Silicon Valley during his early college days. He also showed talent in developing a startup named XS communication, which is now renowned for a content management system and used by publications worldwide.
While being a student, along with his classmate Harinder Takhar, he started website indiasite.net, which later was sold for a whopping $1 million. Indiasite.net was purchased by American giants Lotus Interworks.
Rise of PayTm:
Vijay didn’t have money to splurge on whatever he fancied; he brought second-hand magazines to increase his knowledge. He found about Silicon valley through magazines, and his inspiration arose to study at Stanford University. Though Sharma was offered a huge salary, as per him, it was “golden handcuff” which didn’t give him the freedom to become his own boss. His passion and dedication motivated him to the advent parent company of PayTM, One 97 communication.
In 1997, Vijay Sharma launched One97 Communications that provided mobile content in India in an era when people used basic phones. The users could enjoy cricket scores, jokes, ringtones, exam scores, mobile entertainment and much more in the pre-smartphone era. Later the company sold 10 million ringtones in a single month and got turnover of 11 crores in a single year and this multiplied by 20 for the next four years, pulling about 220 crores.
Vijay wanted to gain more, so he adjusted to the 3G industry in 2010 and gave rise to PayTM. Getting capital to develop PayTM was difficult as no investor was willing to finance it. However, Vijay managed to raise five crores in 6 months to start his new enterprise. The company offered many digital services before starting the venture of Payments.
Paytm became a licensed payment Bank after receiving approval from Reserve Bank of India in 2015. The company grew and gave value services in terms of Internet wallet services 24 hours and seven days a week, which was preferred by customers. The immediate response to complaints and queries made the company better. Also, it builds the trust of millions in the market and people likely to adopt digital payment system.
PayTM traffic increased drastically and downloads spiked as right after the demonetization was declared and people more adapted to digital platforms. Nowadays, PayTM does not offer online monetization, India’s go-to-app offers movie tickets, small and large money transfers, collect donations and much more.
Credits:
- Vijay Shekhar Sharma was the youngest billionaire on Forbes list in 2017.
- CEO of the year by SABRE Awards in 2015.
- Entrepreneur of the year by Economic Times in 2016.
- GQ named him among 50 Most influential Young Indians in 2017.
- India Today magazine awarded him as 18th India’s most influential people of 2017.
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