 "A year after RBI curbs, Paytm founder Sharma expects to get back into biz")
Paytm’s founder expects his bank to get a fresh lease on life from Indian regulators, after he distanced that company from his larger fintech empire.
The Reserve Bank of India last year imposed new curbs on unlisted Paytm Payments Bank Ltd. after years-long warnings about data flows between it and Paytm, a separate business entity that trades as One97 Communications Ltd. The restrictions severely hurt Paytm as it depended on the bank for much of its digital payments business, forcing founder and Chief Executive Officer Vijay Shekhar Sharma to forge new partnerships. Sharma owns 51 per cent of the bank, and the remainder of the shares are held by 0ne97.
Even though the bank is all but shut down, Sharma hasn’t given up. Last year he hired a new CEO for the bank and launched a fresh banking app.
“As far as the bank is concerned, which is a separate entity, now we are pretty much at an arm’s length so it should get sorted out soon,” Sharma told Bloomberg News’ Menaka Doshi at the World Economic Forum 2025 at the Swiss resort of Davos. “We’ve learnt our lessons and we’ve dramatically changed our approach towards the business.”
Sharma’s also hoping to swing Paytm back to operational profitability excluding the cost of employee stock ownerships plan in the next quarter.
“We’re on track for that,” he said. “We probably showed the numbers also.”
Paytm reported a loss of 410 million rupees ($4.7 million) before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, as well as excluding ESOP costs, in the quarter through December. Its net loss narrowed to 2.08 billion rupees, compared with street estimates of 3.32 billion rupees.
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Sharma pioneered fintech in India with Paytm mobile wallets and QR codes that allow for easier digital payments. His backers included Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. founder Jack Ma, SoftBank Group Corp. boss Masayoshi Son and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Chairman Warren Buffett, making Paytm India’s most valuable startup at one point.
Paytm faced little competition when it began operations more than a decade ago. But today it competes with local and global rivals including Walmart Inc.’s PhonePe and Alphabet Inc.’s Google Pay in India’s hyper-competitive market.
Shares in Paytm plummeted after the Reserve Bank of India’s crackdown on the bank, but recovered later to end last year with gains of 60 per cent. The stock is still down about 60 per cent from its disastrous capital markets debut in late 2021.