How Paytm sealed Berkshire deal

NEWDELHI: In the first week of February Paytm’s co-founder and chief executive Vijay Shekhar Sharma met his board member and Goldman Sachs chairman Mark Schwartz in Canada. Schwartz had a proposal for Sharma. He wanted to introduce Sharma to the world’s most respectable and renowned investor, Berkshire Hathaway.

Sharma jumped on the opportunity and a few email exchanges later Sharma, Schwartz and SAIF Partners’ managing partner Ravi Adusumalli (Sharma refers to him as a co-founder), were on a flight to Omaha to meet Todd Comb, an investment manager at Berkshire Hathaway. Sharma met Comb at Berkshire’s office. “One meeting and two phone calls later, the deal was done,” said Sharma, in a telephonic interview on Tuesday. Edited excerpts: and execution of the company. They have global financial services experience. Todd is a banking, fin-tech and payments expert, and his experience will help us understand how the rest of the world is doing the digital payments business. With Berkshire, we have a new vantage point of our capital table and business model. I can also say comfortably that this investment will put to rest all doubts about our ability to make money. It gives us credibility that such a business can make money. Right now the focus is India, as the India opportunity is huge. Berkshire’s global experience will help us refine our business model and will help in our ability to be profitable. Not that I am aware of. Our conversation with Todd has been around Paytm and the Indian payments ecosystem. We could not pick all the money that was offered. Berkshire wanted to invest more than what we have accepted. We did not think it was the right time to raise more money and dilute further, as we already have sufficient capital in the bank. To build the dominant and biggest financial services company in India.