![]() ![]() Looking back on it now in New Delhi, Paytm’s CFO Madhur Deora, who joined from Citi a month before demonetization, is keen to point out that the company was already very much on its way before Modi’s unexpected bounty came along. Sharma’s catch-phrase is ‘Go big or go home’ – it is on his office wall, on his coffee mugs, all over his interviews – and he certainly ran big on demonetization. It is important for any company like ours that has such big ambitions to have partners and shareholders who share our conviction on the journey - Madhur Deora, Paytm Opposition politician Rahul Gandhi suggested Paytm stood for “Pay to Modi” (it is actually Payment through mobile). They ran full-page ads the following day praising Modi for “taking the boldest decision in the financial history of independent India,” a stunt that was not without its critics. Sharma and his staff saw an opportunity and put everything they had into it Sharma has said that he and his staff did 600 days’ worth of work in 60. It went from 125 million wallet customers before demonetization to 185 million three months later, and it has continued to grow, hitting 280 million users by November 2017. The Paytm wallet was the simplest answer and people flocked to it. Modi’s move completely pole axed India’s cash transaction economy and forced people, and in particular the small merchants who are legion in the country, to look at alternatives. The journey of his company from a prepaid mobile webcharge website in 2010 to an Alibaba and Ant Financial-funded juggernaut that is the largest mobile payment service platform in India was well underway.īut demonetization gave the company an almighty lift. The rags-to-riches story of Paytm’s founder, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who not so long ago would walk 20 kilometres across Delhi because if he paid for an auto-rickshaw he would not have enough money for dinner, and who was flat broke as recently as 2003, was by then already well-rehearsed in Indian media. Paytm was already big news before Modi’s demonetization shock last November 8, when he withdrew all the Rp500 and Rp1,000 banknotes from circulation to curb corruption and the black economy, he said, apparently without warning anyone in the banking sector that he was about to do so. People will argue for years about the pros and cons of what he did, but there is near universal agreement on the company that did best out of the whole thing. It is a year since Indian prime minister Narendra Modi turned his country’s transactional finances upside down with his demonetization programme. ![]()
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