India’s crisis on currency spawns ewallet tycoon
NOIDA, India: As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was announcing his sudden decision to ban all large currency notes on a crisp November night, Vijay Shekhar Sharma was being feted by Forbes magazine in Mumbai. His phone was on silent mode.
Halfway through the red carpet event, Sharma turned on his phone, which exploded with calls, texts and notifications from his office at Paytm, India’s largest e-wallet business.
He called his staff and said, “Our time has come.”
In the days that followed, the effects of the government’s surprise move, meant to cut down on corruption and money laundering, reverberated throughout India. Banks scrambled to replace the banned bills. People stood in long, serpentine lines without cash.
Overnight, Sharma’s Paytm, which allows users to pay bills online, became the default payment app for millions. The number of users jumped from 125 million to 185 million in just three months.
Its founder, the burly, bespectacled Sharma, emerged as the undisputed “king of demonetisation.”
Even before Nov 8, Sharma’s rapid five-year rise had become part of start-up lore in India. He is swarmed for selfies at airports and hotels.
He hobnobs with Bill Gates, power-struts at Davos, and is a case study for Harvard Business School students. His US$8 billion company is the country’s official cricket team sponsor, a coveted tag for India’s billionaires.
“After my engineering degree, I could have easily got a job in America like so many people, but I dreamt very early of creating a Silicon Valley right here,” he said in a recent interview here.
India has the third most internet users in the world, about 350 million, after the United States and China.
This has spawned a new generation of internet millionaires heading successful e-commerce and tech start-ups.
“These start-up entrepreneurs represent a new cult of inyour-face competitiveness and aggression,” said Shankkar Aiyar, a financial commentator. “Many of them have emerged from India’s small towns and are not the pedigreed big city players. Their credo is, ‘Give me the opportunity and see what I can do.’ Sharma personifies this cult.”
At his glass-fronted, suburban office, the wall and coffee mugs carry one message: “Go big, or go home.” Nobody has a cubicle in the buzzing office. Sharma ordered his young, scruffy techies to go on the attack mode. “Go capture half the online movie ticket market by April,” he said.
His ambitious new payment bank will benefit the unbanked poor when it launches in April, he said. “I want to be the wealth manager for the auto-rickshaw driver dude.”
His office has Che Guevara posters alongside Om signs. He drives a blue BMW, but when he travels, he does not just want the best flight option, he wants the cheapest.
“I have not forgotten the value of hard-earned money,” he said. — WP-Bloomberg