The founder of Paytm completely changed the consumption pattern of 400 million people in India. His next goal: America.

Whether it is online retail, payment or even games, Indian digital payment company Paytm has completely changed the consumption patterns of 400 million people. Not only that, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the founder of Paytm, also hopes to bring at least 500 million Indians into the banking system through his application and compete with Google and Facebook on the global map.

The business philosophy of "grow bigger or go home" helped Vijay Shekhar Sharma, 465,438+0 years old, build Paytm into a company with a market value of 654.38+05 billion dollars in less than ten years.

Even so, Paytm is still dwarfed by companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Wal-Mart. But that didn't stop Vijay Shekhar Sharma from challenging them. At present, he has begun to promote the development of Paytm on a global scale, and launched a life-and-death struggle with competitors such as Venmo, Square and Apple Pay.

Ten years of promoting digital payment

Vijay Shekhar Sharma founded the parent company One97 Communications in 2000, initially as a mobile service platform for constellation divination, and later extended to other services such as voice games and customized ringtones. Subsequently, Paytm was launched on 20 10, becoming a platform focusing on online purchasing prepaid mobile phone packages and paying cable TV fees.

At first, the board of directors of One97 did not support Vijay Shekhar Sharma to venture to develop Paytm to actively invest in consumer business. Because there were no smartphones in India at that time, the number of netizens was less than 6543.8+0.4 billion. However, at Vijay Shekhar Sharma's insistence, the board of directors finally compromised and provided a small sum of money. He also paid $2 million out of his own pocket to start Paytm.

In 20 12, Paytm was approved by the bank of India to launch mobile wallet, which has now become the core business of Paytm. In 20 14, Paytm cooperated with Uber and became the payment option for the company to take taxis all over India. 20 15 reached another major cooperation with the Indian railway online booking portal.

2016165438+10, Indian prime minister Damodardas Modi suddenly banned the issuance of the country's two largest banknotes, which account for about 86% of India's total cash.

This move shocked the Indian economy. Millions of people spend weeks queuing in front of ATMs to change money, so that they have enough money to pay their daily expenses. At the same time, people who use smartphones in India are turning to mobile payment applications.

The real outbreak of Paytm was that within one month after the implementation of the cash ban, the application added 6.5438+million users. In the past two and a half years, the number of its users has more than doubled to 400 million.

Although digital payment is growing, cash still dominates. In the last fiscal year, the value of currency in circulation increased by 17%, exceeding $296 billion, which is about 10 times that of mobile payment transactions in the same period.

In this regard, Vijay Shekhar Sharma said: "India is still a cash-driven economy to a large extent. Economic growth is achieved through many cash transactions. The challenge we face comes from customers' digital payment ability or consciousness. Paytm and mobile payment have started, but there are still huge obstacles. "

Ambition drive

Vijay Shekhar Sharma grew up in a small town in New Delhi, India. She graduated from high school at the age of 65,438+04 and Delhi Institute of Technology at the age of 65,438+09. After graduation, he taught himself to program and co-founded a company called XS Communication Company, which provided content management systems for several major publications in India. 1999, the company was sold to an American entrepreneur for 1 ten thousand dollars.

The following year, he started to set up One97 to pay off huge debts by doing odd jobs (such as establishing an Internet connection for paying customers). It took him nearly 20 years to become one of the young billionaires in India and a household name in India.

Giants will yield and stumbling blocks will disappear.

At present, global technology and retail giants are using their abundant financial resources to encroach on Paytm's site. Two years ago, Google launched Google Pay, a digital payment service in India, with more than 67 million registered users. Walmart's PhonePe has10.50 billion Indian users. Amazon has also deployed Amazon Pay, a digital payment platform in India, and increased person-to-person digital payment earlier this year.

At the same time, a bigger competitor is waiting for an opportunity. Facebook's mobile communication application WhatsApp has more than 400 million users in India, and the company is preparing to launch its own payment service.

The core services of these companies have a huge user base, which gives them a good start.

Paytm hopes to provide more services to its millions of users, starting with Paytm Mall, an e-commerce portal supported by Alibaba. However, Amazon and Wal-Mart's Flipkart occupied the Indian market, disrupting the plans of millions of small retailers in India. Paytm mall failed to make much progress. The market share of the platform in India is slightly higher than 3%, while the market share of Amazon and Flipkart both exceeds 30%.

But Vijai Sekar Sharma said, "Giants will yield and stumbling blocks will disappear." He believes it can succeed in bringing millions of Indians into the major banking system, and hopes to start preparing for the initial public offering before the end of next year.

Go global

Paytm's bet is not new business, but new country. In 20 18, Paytm cooperated with Yahoo Japan and Softbank, one of its investors, and launched a mobile payment application called PayPay in Japan. In the first 10 month, this app attracted100000 users and opened100000 stores on its platform. But for a country obsessed with cash, this is a huge leap, because 80% of transactions in Japan still use cash, and even the cakes of digital payment are divided up by big companies such as Samsung, Apple and streaming instant messaging application Line.

Paytm has made no secret of its global ambitions. It is reported that each meeting room in its main building is named after the major cities in the world: new york, London, Seoul, Barcelona, Dubai and Hangzhou, the headquarters of Alibaba. Vijay Shekhar Sharma said that his ultimate goal is the United States, and he hopes to become a part of the American economy and play the role of a subversive.

(Compile/Hugo Net Song Shuzhen)

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