The fact that he had the first movers’ advantage when he identified the gap in India’s payments industry and used technology to address it pumped up his confidence and pride.
The journey of Vijay Shekhar Sharma – hailing from a lower-middle-class family from Aligarh and going on to become the country’s youngest billionaire at one point – is a fairytale that highlights where he got his never-say-die attitude and entrepreneurial risk from.
VSS cult in the country rose as he went from graduating as a young engineer from the Delhi Technological University, to successfully building Paytm in a way that grabbed the attention of leading tycoons of the technological world including the likes of Alibaba and SoftBank groups.
The fact that he had the first movers’ advantage when he identified the gap in India’s payments industry and used technology to address it pumped up his confidence and pride.
Although VSS’ journey saw many ups and downs, his biggest moment came in November 2016, when the country’s Prime Minister withdrew Rs 500 and Rs 1000 bank notes from circulation as part of a demonetisation exercise.
VSS saw an opportunity and jumped on it by offering a digital payment solution to countless small businesses that were primarily running on cash with little banking experience. Result - the company's user base swelled to 200 million users in February 2017 from 177 million at the end of 2016.
But this was just the beginning for VSS. He doubled down on the vastly unbanked small businesses and merchants by keeping his eyes set on revolutionising the banking system in the country of more than a billion people.
“We, along with RBI, will provide a whole new banking model to the world,” Sharma proudly declared after launching the company’s banking arm, Paytm Payments Bank, in May 2017.
In the same year, he had announced on stage at a Paytm office party in a state of inebriation: “Jo hamare saath nahin, wo royenge, ek saal me wo kiya jo unhone 10 saal me nahin kiya! [Those who are not on our side will end up crying, we achieved in one year what others could not do in 10 years!]”
However, with huge rewards and hypergrowth, came the signs of risks and increased scrutiny that VSS often ignored.
VSS’ ‘chasing growth come what may’ approach has exposed the once-celebrated fintech giant to multiple regulatory snubs and penalties from the Reserve Bank of India.
While Sharma ensured he built an empire with multiple businesses stacked on top of the technological innovation and the payments ecosystem – Paytm Payments Bank, his decision to disregard compliances has come back to bite him as his company looks to avoid becoming a pale shadow of what it once was envisioned to be.