Vijay Shekhar Shara was born in Aligarh, a small town in Uttar Pradesh in northern India.

Son of a teacher and a housewife, the future entrepreneur was not born from wealthy family. Nevertheless, he distinguished himself at school with his brilliant mind. It getscomplicated when he joined the University of New Delhi at the age of 16 to study engineering.
Accustomed to the first places, the future entrepreneur quickly losed confidence when he realized that all courses were in English. His education, far from the big cities, did not prepare him for this. Unable to keep pace, he became an outsider, accustomed to the low ranks and saw his notes plummet. He gradually stopped attending school. Although discouraged, the selfmade man did not give up and tried to improve his English by reading each book in English and Hindi. He also was helped by classmates and by reading dictionnaries and Fortune magazine.
Thanks to reading, he discovered the Internet and Silicon Valley.

Feeling close to this world filled with dazzling successes, he tried entrepreneurship.

He partnered with a friend and used his free time to learn how to code and launched XS Communication. The start-up offered a content management system (CMS) for the creation of website still used by many newspapers such as The Indian Express.
At this moment, he graduated and obtained his first job at IT MNC, which resigned from six months later. It was the beginning of long journey full of pitfalls. He launched One97 Communication in the year 2000, a start-up creator of mobile services for which he obtained significant funding. But beginnings were difficult and, riddled with debts, he spent many evenings without dinner. Vijay Shekhar Sharma then held various minor jobs, ran conferences, and saved trivial sums to survive and pursue his dreams. Despite these difficulties, One 97 Communication was developing and gaining new markets from national and international operators. In 2011, Vijay offered to his board a project that would mark a turning point in his life: Paytm, a mobile payment service for individuals and merchants. His team was dubious in the face of a seemingly non-existent market. He personally invested $2M to support his project. To engage consumer confidence in this new service in India, he created a 24/7 customer service in which he invested 30% of the budget. Paytm’s system uses Verisign-certified encryption technology and can process 5,000 transactions per second. Eight years after, Paytm is the leader in mobile payment in cities and rural areas.
His instinct pushed himto believe in himself.

The man with the always welcoming smile will say later: « there is nothing fun to do what others expect from you, it is more exciting to do what they believe impossible ».

On the model of Tencent or Alibaba, he also offers Paytm Mall, an e-commerce platform and a market place. The leader did not stop there and launched Paytm Bank. The entity approved by the Bank of India in 2017 plans to provide banking and financial services to 500 M Indian people. Paytm has acquired Shifu and Near-in to strengthen its service offering and improve the customer experience. Nothing has been easy for its strong spirit, yet Vijay has managed to get top investors notch : Berkshire (Warren Buffet), Alibaba, Alipay and Softbank, which would value Paytm atbetween 10 and $12bn.
In addition to his fighting spirit and his business acumen, the success of Vijay and his company is based on his management model. The leader values each person who contributes to his view or his organization and does not speak of employees but rather of colleagues or teammates. His three creeds are: working hard, having fun and create the story. It offers many benefits including a rock festival each year. Also a philanthropist, the entrepreneur does not forget his modest past and organizes many projects to help the poor through his business. The company has also been committed to the environment since 2014.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma is married and has one child. The family lives in New Delhi where she owns a property. The entrepreneur is a fan of Bono and Chris Martin.