Vijay Shekhar Sharma

कोरोना संकट के बीच पेटीएम ने किया बड़ा एलान, दवा बनाने के लिए देगी 5 करोड़ रुपये और अमेजन ने लिया ये फैसला

डिजिटल भुगतान से जुड़ी कंपनी पेटीएम (Paytm) ने एक बड़ा एलान किया है. पेटीएम ने कहा है कि वह कोरोना वायरस (Coronavirus) की दवा विकसित करने के लिए भारतीय शोधकर्ताओं को पांच करोड़ रुपये देगी, पेटीएम के संस्थापक और सीईओ विजय शेखर शर्मा ने रविवार को ट्वीट में यह बात कही।

डिजिटल भुगतान से जुड़ी कंपनी पेटीएम ने बड़ा एलान किया है। पेटीएम ने कहा है कि, वह कोरोना वायरस (Covid-19) की दवा विकसित करने के लिए भारतीय शोधकर्ताओं को पांच करोड़ रुपये देगी। पेटीएम के संस्थापक और सीईओ विजय शेखर शर्मा ने रविवार को ट्वीट में यह बात कही। बता दें कि, देश में कोरोना वायरस के मामले लगातार बढ़ रहे हैं और इसकी रोकथाम व इलाज के लिए अभी तक कोई दवा नहीं है।

विजय शेखर शर्मा ने ट्वीट में लिखा, “हमें अधिक संख्या में भारतीय इनोवेटर्स, शोधकर्ताओं की जरूरत है जो वेंटिलेटर की कमी और कोविड-19 के इलाज के लिए देशी समाधान खोज सकें। पेटीएम संबंधित चिकित्सा समाधानों पर काम करने वाले ऐसे दलों को पांच करोड़ रुपये देगी ”।

We need more Indian innovators to start building such indigenous solutions for potential ventilators shortage and other COVID cures. @Paytm commits ₹5 crore for such teams working on COVID related medical solutions. pic.twitter.com/YZ1a6RzaKp

— Stay Home, Stay Safe (@vijayshekhar) March 22, 2020

विजय शेखर ने आईआईएससी, बेंगलुरु के प्राध्यापक गौरव बनर्जी के एक संदेश पर प्रतिक्रिया व्यक्त करते हुए यह बात कही। बनर्जी ने अपने संदेश में किसी आपातकालीन स्थिति में देशी तकनीक का इस्तेमाल कर वेंटिलेटर बनाने की बात कही थी।

इंजीनियर्स बना रहे हैं प्रोटोटाइप

बनर्जी ने अपने संदेश में कहा है कि, उनकी एयरोस्पेस, इलेक्ट्रिकल और इलेक्ट्रॉनिक्स इंजीनियर्स की एक छोटी टीम भारतीय सामग्री का इस्तेमाल करते हुए एक वेंटीलेटर नमूना तैयार करने का प्रयास कर रही है। यह काम कोविड-19 के दौरान आपात स्थिति को देखते हुए किया जा रहा है। शर्मा ने कहा कि, उन्होंने अपने ट्विटर में सीधे संदेश भेजने का विकल्प खुला रखा है। इसमें संभावित टीम और नवीन खोज करने वालों की सूचना प्राप्त की जा सकती है।

पेटीएम के अलावा अमेजन ने भी लिया यह फैसला

इसके अलावा शनिवार, 21 मार्च को, ई-कॉमर्स की दिग्गज कंपनी अमेजन के संस्थापक और सीईओ जेफ बेजोस ने घोषणा किया कि, स्वास्थ्य और आर्थिक संकट के इस समय में, अमेज़न एक लाख नई भूमिकाओं के लिए लोगों को काम पर रखेगा, और साथ ही जो ऑर्डर पूरा कर रहे हैं और वितरित कर रहे हैं तनाव और उथल-पुथल के इस समय में अपने ग्राहकों के लिए उनके प्रतिदिन के कामगारों के लिए वेतन बढ़ाएगा।

जेफ बेजोस ने कहा, “इसी समय, रेस्तरां और बार जैसे अन्य व्यवसायों को भी बंद करने के लिए मजबूर किया जा रहा है। हम आशा करते हैं कि, जिन लोगों का काम बंद कर दिया गया है वे हमारे साथ काम करेंगे जब तक कि वे नौकरियों में वापस जाने में सक्षम न हों।

कोरोनो वायरस के मामलों में बढ़ोत्तरी

बता दें कि, देश के अलग-अलग हिस्सों से ताजा मामले सामने आने के बाद सोमवार यानि 23 मार्च को दोपहर 2 बजे तक कोरोनो वायरस के मामलों की संख्या बढ़कर 429 हो गई। कुल मिलाकर दिल्ली, पटना, कर्नाटक, पंजाब और महाराष्ट्र से अब तक 41 विदेशी नागरिक और आठ मौत का मामला सामने आया है।

Paytm Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma became youngest Indian billionaire

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, ranked 1,394th on the list with a fortune of $1.7 billion, is the only Indian billionaire in the under-40 league.

Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, 39, is the youngest Indian billionaire, while 92-year-old Samprada Singh, chairman emeritus of Alkem Laboratories, is the oldest, according to Forbes.

Sharma, ranked 1,394th on the list with a fortune of $1.7 billion, is the only Indian billionaire in the under-40 league.

Sharma founded fast-rising mobile wallet Paytm in 2011. He has also created Paytm Mall, an e-commerce business business and Paytm Payments Bank.

“One of the biggest beneficiaries of India’s demonetisation, Paytm has notched up 250 million registered users and 7 million transactions daily. Sharma owns 16 per cent of Paytm, which is now valued at $9.4 billion,” Forbes said.

Related Post: Ritesh Agarwal: The man behind OYO Room

Of the 2,208 billionaires in Forbes’ 2018 list of the world’s richest, just 63 are under the age of 40 and more than half (34) are self-made entrepreneurs.

In all, the 63 youngest billionaires in the world are worth a collective $265 billion, up from $208 billion last year.

Meanwhile, 92-year-old Samprada Singh, who is the chairman emeritus of Alkem Laboratories, is the oldest Indian billionaire. He was ranked 1,867th on the list with a fortune of $1.2 billion.

Singh founded the pharma firm Alkem Laboratories 45 years ago. Singh worked in a chemist’s store before venturing out on his own distributing pharmaceuticals.

“Shares of the generics maker, known for its antibiotics Clavam and Taxim, have more than doubled since its November 2016 IPO. For the year ended March 2017, Alkem reported a 20 per cent rise in net earnings to $139 million on revenues of $913 million,” Forbes said.

Reliance Jio and Paytm from India join Fast Company’s world ‘50 most innovative companies list’

Reliance Jio has been given 17th rank, while Vijay Shekhar Sharma led Paytm has got the 31st position in the table.

Amid tussle between the leading telecom service providers in India, Mukesh Ambani – controlled Reliance Jio sneaks into Fast Company’s World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies for 2018.

American business magazine who released its annual report has given 17th rank to one of the cheapest cellular networks in its seventeen months of commercial launch in India.

The Fast Company’s latest edition of the World’s Most Innovative Companies spans more than 350 enterprises across 36 categories. iPhone maker Apple has topped the list followed by global online streaming giant Netflix and San Fransisco-based payments company Square.

Chinese Internet giant Tencent and US-based e-commerce major Amazon stands at number four and five respectively. The ranking also includes The Washington Post and Spotify who are in the top 10 list, while Instagram, SpaceX, and Walmart have managed to keep themselves in top 15 most innovative companies.

India and China contribution to Fast Company’s 2018 edition

Apart from Reliance Jio, the Vijay Shekhar Sharma led Paytm is the only player included as an Indian entity in the list. The Alibaba-backed payment-cum-e-commerce firm has got the 31st position in the table.

The magazine firm also released the top 10 Indian firms in Most Innovative Company’s country wise list. Reliance Jio has topped the chart followed by Paytm. Mobile advertising and discovery platform InMobi who acquired Los Angeles-based startup AerServ for a whopping $90 million got 3rd place in the list.

Interestingly agritech startup EM3 AgriServices stayed ahead of Oyo Rooms, who got 10th position on the chart. However, only two of the top 10 Indian firms on the Fast Company’s list made it to the top 50 table at world level.

Besides, Indian American venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, founder of Palo Alto-based VC firm Social Capital and former executive of Facebook, has also been selected and ranked 19th in the Fast Companies list. Social capital recently invested in SaaS-based startup WebEngage.

Fast Company, which holds a majority of players from the US in its list, Tencent, Bytedance-parent company of news app Toutiao, VIPKid, drone startup DJI are four players from China who made to the list of 50 companies selected by the American business magazine.

While Shenzhen-based DJI being the only drone startup in the Fast Company’s 2018 edition, Beijing-headquartered VIPKid and US-based Duolingo are the two startups who got the entry from ed-tech category.

How Reliance Jio made it to the table

Since its inception, Jio, the VoLTE-only operator in the country with coverage across all 22 telecom circles in India has been on the expansion spree. After acquiring the wireless assets of Reliance Communications (RCOM) and its affiliates, the firm has been investing in all possible area.

Recently, it left behind countries leading mobile selling brand Samsung to become number one feature phone brand.

The firm is eyeing a huge opportunity in the field of artificial intelligence, machine learning, internet of things (IoT) and blockchain technology. The company is also planning to launch its own cryptocurrency JioCoin the future.

After giving a tough competition to the incumbents such as Airtel, Idea, Vodafone, the firm is planning to go public by the end of 2018.

Within 15 months of its launch, Reliance Jio turned profitable and posted a net profit of Rs 504 crore for the fiscal third quarter.

Jio success can be imagined with a report based on consensus Street estimates via Mint, which says that Jio took only 16 months to reach a revenue of Rs 6,879 crore for the December quarter, whereas Idea Cellular took 17 years to achieve the figure.

These are richest startup founders for India in 2017

Snapdeal’s Kunal Bahl and Ola’s Bhavish Aggarwal are no longer in the top 15 richest entrepreneurs.

A recent study on Indian startups by the IBM Institute for Business Value and Oxford Economics found that 90% of startups in India fail within the first five years. Thousands of internet entrepreneurs are being minted in India every year. Billions of dollars were poured into the new ventures by investment firms. However, only a few have stood out with their startups. Many of those are on the way to achieving unicorn status. India’s list of richest startup founders in 2017 still contains many familiar names, but some have slipped off — Snapdeal’s Kunal Bahl and Ola’s Bhavish Aggarwal are no longer in the top 15 richest Indian entrepreneurs.

Below is the complete list of the richest startup founders in India.

Bhavin Turakhia, Directi/Media.net

Bhavin Turakhia is an Indian entrepreneur, CEO and co-founder of Directi. He is also the founder and CEO of Flock, Radix, CodeChef, and Ringo, as well as the co-founder of Media.net and Zeta.In 2016, Bhavin Turakhia was ranked as the 95th richest person in India, with a net worth of US$1.3 billion, along with his brother Divyank Turakhia. Bhavin Turakhia has jumped to first place after seeing a four-fold increase in his wealth in 2017. With a net worth of Rs. 11,500 crore, Bhavin Turakhia is currently India’s richest tech entrepreneur.

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Paytm

Vijay Shekhar Sharma is an Indian entrepreneur and founder of mobile payments company, Paytm. In 2005, he started One97 Communications which offered mobile content like news, cricket scores, ringtones, jokes and exam results. One97 is the parent company of Paytm, which was launched in 2010. In 2017, Vijay Shekhar Sharma was featured in the World Billionaire’s List by Forbes, and became India’s youngest business man to be featured on the list.

Softbank has made its biggest investment by sealing a funding round of Rs 9,000 crore ($1.4 billion) in One 97 Communications which owns mobile payments provider Paytm, making it the country’s second most valuable startup with worth $8 billion. Vijay Shekhar Sharma, now has a net worth of Rs. 9,000 crore.

Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, Flipkart

Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, co-founders of India’s most valuable internet firm Flipkart, lost their billionaire status after the e-commerce firm’s valuation fell in its latest funding round. The Bansals became the first internet billionaires in 2015 when Flipkart raised $700 million at a valuation of $15 billion. Their fortunes were then estimated to be worth roughly $1.3 billion each, according to Forbes magazine. Now, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal have worth of Rs. 5,400 crore each.

Ganesh Krishnan, Portea Medical

Ganesh Krishnan is a successful serial India entrepreneur with four successful green field ventures and exits. Ganesh’s last venture, TutorVista was acquired by Pearson for $213 million. His current venture, Portea Medical, provides technlogy-led home health care to the Indian consumer. He also mentors, incubates and funds startups and is strategic investor and promoter of several Indian consumer Internet and ecommerce companies including Bigbasket.com, Bluestone.com, and Avagmah.com. Ganesh Krishnan has a net worth of Rs. 5,100 crore.

Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Info Edge

Sanjeev Bikhchandani is an Indian entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Info Edge which owns Naukri.com. In 1990, Sanjeev Bikhchandani started two Internet companies Indmark and Info Edge, along with a partner. Info Edge is India’s premier online classifieds company in recruitment (Naukri.com, NaukriGolf.com, Quadranglesearch.com, FirstNaukri.com), matrimony (Jeevansathi.com), real estate (99acres.com), education (Shiksha.com) and related services. Currently, the company has investments in Zomato Media Private Limited (Zomato.com), Applect Learning Systems Private Limited (Meritnation.com), Etechaces Marketing and Consulting Private Limited (Policybazaar.com), Kinobeo Software Private Limited (MyDala.com), Canvera Digital Technologies Private Limited (Canvera.com), and many others. Sanjeev Bikhchandani has now net worth of Rs. 4,800 crore.

Vishal Mehta, Infibeam.com

After working for Dell and Amazon in the US for five years, Vishal Mehta returned to India in 2007 and started Infibeam along with a group of Amazon employees. He funded the company by selling his personal assets rather than opting for external equity funding. Infibeam.com started as an automobile portal in 2007, but later turned into an online retailer. In 2017, Infibeam has merged with CCAVenue, in a deal that valued the payment gateway at $289 million. Now, Vishal Mehta has a net worth of Rs. 3,500 crore.

Dhiraj Rajaram, Mu Sigma

Dhiraj Rajaram is the founder and chairman of Mu Sigma Inc,an Indian multinational data analytics company. After completing his education, Dhiraj worked as a management consultant at PwC in the US and Booz Allen Hamilton India. After quitting his job from Booz Allen Hamilton India, Dhiraj started data analytics company Mu Sigma Inc in 2004. Dhiraj Rajaram was named to Fortune Magazine’s list of 40 under 40 in 2013, and won The Economic Times “Entrepreneur of Year” award in 2014. Currently, Dhiraj has a net worth of Rs. 2,500 crore.

Rahul Sharma, Micromax

Rahul Sharma is an Indian entrepreneur, founder of YU Televentures and the co-founder of Micromax Informatics. Rahul is currently serving a CEO of Micromax Informatics since April 1, 2007. While the impact of demonetisation had its impact on Indian players, Chinese smartphone brands – OPPO, Vivo, Lenovo and Xiaomi – continued to grow at the expense of Indian brands. However, in terms of overall Indian smartphone market share in 2016 Micromax still stood at No.2 spot with a 11% share. Hence, Rahul Sharma still has net worth of Rs. 1,400 crore.

VSS Mani, Just Dial

In 1996, VSS Mani started Just Dial, which provides online and telephone business listings service. In 2006, after two unsuccessful attempts, Just Dial finally got in private equity investment through SAIF Partners. US hedge fund Tiger Global put in Rs 77 crore. In 2012, Just Dial raised a further Rs 327 crore from Sequoia and SAP Ventures before it went public in 2013 and its investors partially cashed out. In 2012, Just Dial obtained approval from Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) for its proposed Initial public offering (IPO). In May 2013, Just Dial went public. VSS Mani has now net worth of Rs. 1,100.

Byju Raveendran, Byjus

In 2003, during his two months break from an overseas job as a service engineer, Byju Raveendran decided to help some of his friends appearing for CAT in Bangalore. It was an informal way of helping, and he also took the exam, and scored 100 percentile. He started teaching some of his friends, and took up the test yet again in 2005 without any preparation, and scored a perfect 100 percentile yet again. This time he also appeared for IIM-A, B, C interviews and cleared all of them. However, decided against pursuing MBA and instead saw potential in teaching students how to crack CAT, and started Byju’s.

Byju’s recently raised $50 million co-funded by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s investment arm The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), Sequoia Capital, Sofina, Lightspeed Ventures and Times Internet Ltd. Now, Raveendran Byju has a net worh of Rs. 1,000 crore.

Paytm suspended app POS feature on customer data and privacy concern

Paytm, which is a popular mobile wallet company has recently faced some problem regarding customer data and privacy.

Paytm, which is a popular mobile wallet company has recently faced some problem regarding customer data and privacy. After demonetization, Paytm had caught on in a big way with the country’s population as everyone started using this app to make and receive payments as it was convenient and accepted almost everywhere.

PoS was a feature designed to get rid of the card machine and allowed people to make and receive money through the Paytm app installed in their smart phones. However, after the launch of this feature, there were raging concerns regarding the privacy of consumer data and the customer’s card details were required to facilitate transactions.

This feature was introduced after the demonetization as it was estimated that most people will want to go cashless and start using mobile wallets for transactions. Paytm was also expecting to receive over 15 million downloads by the end of November.

“Based on some suggestions from the industry, we have decided to add additional certifications and features before making it available to merchants. We will re-launch this product as soon as we have updated the product. Nothing is more important to us than customer data and privacy. We will always put this above all without fail.” -Paytm claimed in a blog

According to information from NPCI (the National Payments Corporation of India), over 600 customers from 19 banks have been deceived of more than a crore by using only stolen debit card data.

However, Paytm claimed that it doesn’t store any card details in the app. At the time of the launch, the Paytm founder, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, had also said that the company is a PCI DSS (Payment Cards Industry Data Security Standard) certified company.

However, they’ve scrapped the feature now for consumer data security.

Why Big Bazaar tied up with Paytm

With the latest partnership announced with mobile payments and commerce platform Paytm, Kishore Biyani is making an effort to go online without taking on the risks and huge costs associated with the e-tail business.

Kishore Biyani has been extremely critical of the business model followed by e-commerce companies in the past. The founder and group CEO of one of India’s largest organised retailer Future Group, however, cannot close his eyes to the potential of e-commerce and the ever-growing base of customers shopping online.

With the latest partnership announced with mobile payments and commerce platform Paytm, Biyani is making an effort to go online without taking on the risks and huge costs associated with the e-tail business.

Under the deal announced by the two partners on 4 August, customers will be able to shop for Future Group’s hypermarket chain Big Bazar’s merchandise on Paytm’s marketplace and also, get them delivered to their homes.
Explaining the rationale behind his tie-up with Paytm, Biyani said: “The cost of customer acquisition in the e-commerce space is more than 20%, the cost of fulfilment is more than 20% and the cost of running operations is 8-10%. This totals to almost 50% as the cost of operation. At this cost, you can’t sell any goods on this medium.”

Biyani, indeed, isn’t speaking through is hat. Almost all e-commerce companies, including the market leaders such as Flipkart or Snapdeal and even global companies such as Amazon, have been running massive losses in their operation with no signs of profit in sight yet.

Since, market pundits have been predicting that at some point, online retail transaction will become big enough to command a viable business model with a huge potential for growth, Biyani did make a few attempts at hopping on to the e-commerce bandwagon in the past.

In 2014, for instance, the Future Group had tied up with Amazon India to sell its merchandise, primarily private fashion labels. The same year, it had also launched shop.bigbazaardirect.com, the online platform for its direct selling offshoot Big Bazar Direct.

Both experiments, however, failed to deliver desired results.

The deal with Paytm

The tie-up with Paytm is Biyani’s yet another attempt at going online. Is he late to the e-commerce party? He doesn’t think so.

“We are not entering late. We were unable to do business online because unit economic wasn’t working,” he told Techcircle, adding: “We didn’t want to spend considerable amount in the acquisition of customers, in fulfilment or administrative obligations.”

Biyani said in Paytm, the Future Group has found a partner that can “bring the unit economics into the business. Besides, we don’t have to worry about payment gateway cost. In that sense, it is a great fix for us.

“Biyani’s optimism may not be misplaced. To begin with, the tie-up with Paytm comes just a few days ahead of Future Group’s hypermarket chain Big Bazar’s yearly flagship sale, Maha Bachat that will run during 13-16 August this year. A hugely popular format, Maha Bachat contributes around 3% to Big Bazar’s annual revenue. With its discounted offers moving online during the four days, Biyani is hoping to reach out to a new set of customers outside of his loyal set.

Big Bazaar’s online avatar

Under the deal, an anchor store has been created for Big Bazaar on the Paytm app. Customers will not only be able to browse and buy Big Bazaar merchandise on offer, they will get a further 15% cash back on all purchases using Paytm’s wallet facility.

Paytm, too, sees the partnership with Future Group as a win-win deal. “Together (with Future Group), we see a fantastic opportunity to create a mobile first, omni-channel retail and payment solution for our wide consumer base,” Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and CEO of Paytm, was quoted as saying in a PTI report.

In a chat with Techcircle, Sharma said the partnership is an attempt at bringing a high frequency, large offline platform, online. “They (Future Group) do not have a very active e-commerce strategy as publicly visible. This (the partnership) will allow them to get mobile and internet customers to shop for Big Bazaar merchandise. Everything that is available offline will be available on the anchor app,” he added.

This article was originally published in TechCircle VcCircle

How Vijay Shekhar Sharma started – Life of Paytm’s founder

His Journey is inspirational to every Indian Entrepreneur.

The man, who always wears a welcoming smile, stands true to every word he wrote during the most difficult times of his life.

From being a small-town boy from Aligarh who bought second-hand tech magazines to the founder of one of India’s most trusted technology brands, Vijay Shekhar Sharma has come a long way.

Vijay Shekhar Sharma owns a company whose current value is a little over $3 billion in the market in 2016, a dream dreamt when he was struggling to make ends meet with Rs 10 in pocket.

His journey is inspirational to every Indian entrepreneur, lets go through his journey with this Infographic showing how he started.