Vijay Shekhar- Age, Family and Career
Vijay Shekhar Sharma was born on 8th July 1978 in the small town outside Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh. He completed his higher secondary at just 14 years of age. He was from a small town. Vijay Shekar Sharma’s father was an honest school teacher with high principles, who refused to give tuitions for extra bucks as he believed it the right thing to do. Vijay Shekhar Sharma was a medium of education was Hindi till the higher secondary and had no or little knowledge about English. His tough time started when he left his cosy town to pursue graduation in Delhi College of Engineering where he came to know the value of English.
He got low grades in every exam, went hopelessly, but never gave up. He tried his best to learn and mastered the language in ways only few can, through friends, second-hand magazines and books. There were times when he thought of quitting everything, but his willpower kept him going. He passed out of Delhi College of Engineering at an early age of 19. He dreamt of being in Silicon Valley, the Mecca for worldwide innovation.
A Startup In College
Vijay Shekhar Sharma rarely went to college and dedicated that time to building something new. Vijay Shekhar Sharma was inspired by Yahoo and made the internet as his playground. He built his first company-‘XS Communications’, a college based start-up that created Content Management System and it was used by several major publications including The Indian Express. By then, he learned to code himself and started building his own content management system with the help of his college mates. Later, he joined MNC and worked there for six months before quitting starting his own company with friends. His nightmare didn’t stop. He was conned by his friends and was left bankrupt and devastated both mentally and financially.
But he didn’t give up. He skipped his meals and went miles on foot to attend work and meetings. In 2005, things took a good turn when he started One97, which offers mobile content including news, cricket scores, ringtones, jokes and exam results (the parent company of Paytm) which was launched in 2010 and the team of One97 started working in the field of content, advertising and e-commerce. In 2011 he did something very remarkable, putting the Paytm on the table in front of the board of directors of One97. At first, the board was not convinced as they were about to enter a non-existence market.
The Success Story of Paytm
This genius successful man was born on 8th July 1978 in Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh. Being noticed for his genius intelligence through a special permission he was admitted in Delhi Engineering College at the age of 1 5 years old. Just like most of the other Hindi medium students Vijay Shekhar Sharma also found difficult to understand the lectures given by the college professor in English. In the class whenever he had been asked any questions by the professor he couldn’t answer it. His classmates also make fun of him. Then soon he lost his interest in his classes. Then he started to spend most of the time in the library reading success stories in English. After reading so many success stories one thing he had understood clearly that if he want to do something big in his life then he must be his own boss. So he started learning coding from his college classes. After few days he and one of a his friend together developed an website named indiasite.net which was an search engine. After two years an American company brought their website. After that for one year Vijay Shekhar Sharma worked in several projects to raise sufficient fund to start his own company. In the year 2000 he started his own company named One97.
One97 used to provide the facility of people’s search, i.e. if someone wants to know who is calling them then he or she have to message the number to One97 Company. The company will reply to the message providing the details of the person who is the owner of that number. But his saving was sort to run the company. To grow his company he had to take loan from bank. To run his company sometimes he had to apply for a loan even with 24% interest rate. The profit that he was earning from his company all of that went into paying bank interest, employee salary and house rent. Even at one time when he had not enough money to pay his house rent he use to come home late at night and went out early in the morning so that his landlord don’t get to see him. Day by day his financial situation was getting worst. Even sometimes he has dinner at his friend’s house because he had not enough money to buy food. His financial condition becomes so poor that he used to spend nights having dinner from a roadside cheap paratha stall near Molchand Hospital in Delhi.
Sometime when he have not enough money the Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma, he have two cup of tea as dinner to spend the rest of the night. To run his company he had to start to work as a consultant and as a trainer. At this time he met Mr.Piyush Agarwal. Mr Piyush Agarwal need helped form Vijay Shekhar Sharma to develop his company software. When Vijay Shekhar Sharma did that Piyush Agarwal’s company made profit of double. Getting impressed by Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s work Mr. Piyush Agarwal offered him the post CEO of his company. In response to that Vijay Shekhar Sharma said to Mr. Piyush Agarwal that he have his own company and at any cost he want to make it successful, so he cannot accept his offer. On the other hand due to financial crisis his family members were forcing him to shut down his company and to settle down with a good decent job. On one side financial crisis and on the other side family pressure made Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s completely depressed. At the end, as there was no way out, Vijay Shekhar Sharma accepted Mr. Piyush Agarwal’s offer but with a condition, i.e. he will look after Mr. Piyush Agarwal’s company for the half of his day and for rest of the day he will look after his own company and for that Mr.Piyush Agarwal have to pay him 30,000 Rs per month salary. Mr.Piyush Agarwal accepted his proposal. Mr.Piyush Agarwal also liked Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s companies work. Due to high interest rate it had become a huge amount of money to be paid to the bank. When Vijay Shekhar Sharma told about this to Mr.Piyush Agarwal. Mr. Piyush Agarwal brought 40% of Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s company share with 8 lakh rupees. He noticed that the use of Smartphone is getting increased day by day among the people.
So he wanted to do something with the Smartphone, so that people can easily do financial transaction using their Smartphone. According to the plan on 8th July, 2010 on Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s 37th birthday Paytm.com was launched. And within few days 197 companies publically launched the mobile app Paytm, which full form is ‘Pay through Mobile’. Although at first it was started with the facilities of online mobile recharge and DTH recharge. Within few more days they added more features like paying electricity bills, gas bills, bus tickets. People started to love it. And within just three years Paytm won 250 lakh wallet users. After few years, by providing the services like Amazon, Flipkart, etc., Paytm entered into the world of e-commerce. And recently also started their Paytm payments bank. Vijay Shekhar Sharma is a very simple and down to earth person. His company and lifestyle is proving of that. Although Paytm made a turnover of 819 crore rupees. Vijay Shekhar Sharma have no special room in his office. He works in the same room sitting with his employee. And today Paytm has become so successful that starting from a roadside shop to shopping malls, everywhere Paytm is accepted. Now Vijay Shekhar Sharma is so happy in his life that he says “I don’t need to sleep, I am living a dream”.
