With a net worth of over 2.6 Billion USD, Vijay Shekhar recently featured on Forbes Annual list of global billionaires. While this is not surprising in itself, the intriguing part of this lies in the fact that Paytm recently posted losses worth 3,398 Crore INR this year. Furthermore, there have been rumors circulating on the fact that Paytm mall may be scaling down. So, in spite of all these losses, how is Vijay Shekhar managing to grow richer day by day?
Paytm gained ground in the Indian market after PM Modi announced demonetization in 2016. With cash currency wiped out significantly, digital payments became the norm, with Paytm emerging as the front runner. Now, there are multiple payment apps in India that offer a range of services, but Paytm is still one of the leading ones in the nation. They boast of more than 360 million users as well as conducting more than 16 million transactions on a daily basis.
Paytm’s e-commerce business backed by Alibaba Group has been making huge changes in its operations as it has been losing steam faster than most experts predicted. Traffic also declined by almost 90% on PayTm Mall website. Paytm removed cashback on their e-commerce platform a few months back. Paytm mall is now moving towards the O2O model from B2C model.
While most investors are currently steering clear of investments, Paytm is one of the unicorns that is still being favored by many. Recently, Alibaba Group and Softbank together invested $453 million to facilitate Paytm Mall. Moreover, Warren Buffet’s Omaha based Berkshire Hathaway recently announced an investment of $300 million in the brand. With this, Paytm is currently valued between $ 10 Billion – $12 Billion.
So, small hiccups along the way like losses and rumors about Paytm mall are not likely to hurt Vijay Shekhar’s overall revenue. The brand and its owner are growing and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
