PAYTM

Founder/s: Vijay Shekhar Sharma
Key people: Vijay Shekhar Sharma (CEO), Amit Sinha (COO)
Number of employees: ~500

Paytm is an Indian electronic payment and e-commerce company based out of Delhi NCR, India. Launched in August 2010, it is the consumer brand of parent One97 Communications. The name is an acronym for “Pay Through Mobile.” The company employs over 13,000 employees as of January 2017 and has 3 million offline merchants across India. It also operates the Paytm payment gateway and the Paytm Wallet.

Among other sources of funding, in 2015, Paytm became the first Indian company to receive funding from Chinese eCommerce company Alibaba, after it raised over $625 million at a valuation of $1.5 billion. The Alibaba Group was the biggest stakeholder in Paytm parent company One97 Communications.

History

Paytm was founded and incubated by One97 Communications Limited in 2010 as a prepaid mobile recharge website. In an interview, its founder Sharma related how he was inspired during a visit to China, when he saw vegetable vendors using their mobile phones to receive payments from some customers. This led to him establishing Paytm wallet in 2013.

In 2013, the company launched Paytm Wallet, which became India’s largest mobile payment service platform with over 150 million wallets and 75 million android based app downloads as of November 2016. The surge in usage of the service was largely due to the demonetization of the 500 and 1000 rupee currency notes. After 8 November 2016, Paytm’s transactions and profit increased significantly.

Paytm has invested $5 million in auto rickshaw aggregator and hyperlocal delivery firm Jugnoo. It has also acquired Delhi-based consumer behavior prediction platform Shifu for $8 million and local services startup Near.in for $2 million.