The Inspiring Story of Paytm
Paytm, one of the leading companies in India has become popular for its domain of mobile payments. It is considered as Avant-grade of the cashback business model. Paytm has brought a revolutionary shift towards the payment methodology. After demonetization, it was in every Indian’s mind while shopping online. Reaching this place was not that simple. There were lots of hurdles and it has to overcome lots of hardships and challenges to reach here. Let’s throw light on the success story of Paytm that can inspire lots of new budding entrepreneurs.
About Paytm
Initially Paytm was an online wallet as well as an e-commerce website. It allowed payments for some limited utilities like shopping bills, mobile recharge, and DTH recharge. Over the years, it expanded into many more utilities and today it has almost everything under its operations.
Now, it also allows the customers to recharge metro cards and even make payments for the utilities like electricity and water. People can easily transfer funds to other bank accounts, make payments for hotel reservations, book train, bus, and flight tickets, so on. The latest expansion was the inclusion of e-retail and e-commerce. Under the concept of e-retail, the sellers can list their products on the Paytm website and buyers can place their order online. This concept also helped them to expand their customer base.
About Founders
Before starting Paytm, the founder Vijay Shekar Sharma, a student of the prestigious college of India had already introduced its parent company One97 Communication. In the year 1997, he developed the website Indiasite.net and later sold that website at a valuation of $1 million. Further, he used that money in One97 communication for yielding mobile contents like ringtones, jokes, cricket scores, and news.
Origin
Vijay Shekar Sharma launched Paytm in August 2010 as a platform for performing online mobile recharge and make payments of the bills. Today, it has expanded its operations, and now it allows its customers to make payments for almost all types of transactions in just a click. In these 8 years, Paytm gained more than 450 million registered users and the counting is increasing every day.
When it started back in 2010, it was only a website offering an online mobile recharge facility but today it is a web app that can be accessed through all the browsers. The Paytm app is available both in Android and iOS operating systems. In 2014, it launched its wallet service and a report says that till July 2019, it had around 450 million registered users.
The origination of the company always shows that even if you have a slow start, you can go ahead in your business plans and ultimately become a success. But for the business owners who have just started business consultancy is mandatory. Only with proper guidance, you can find out which step is appropriate for your business and that can help you to succeed. The experienced business consultants on SeekEx can provide you complete guidance throughout your journey to make your business successful.
Investors
Paytm has got hold of some of the prestigious investors like Alibaba groups, SAIF partners, Alipay, Sapphire Venture, and Silicon Valley Bank. There are numerous sources from where Paytm receives its revenues. It includes commissions from utility bill payments, online recharges, advertisements on the website, and an Escrow account maintained in a nationalized bank. It also earns from the service charges it charge while performing a fund transfer from the wallet to the bank accounts.
The success of Paytm made many big investors interested to invest in it. Even Ratan Tata invested in Paytm in March 2015. Alibaba group of China also invested around $570 million in Paytm. Another company Ant financial services group bought 25% stakes in One97. Further, for its expansion plans, it borrowed a sum of Rs.300 Cr from ICICI bank as working capital.
However, finding a good investor is an important step for the businesses. You must know the right way to approach the investors. To know more about it read the blog on How to approach investors?
How it became successful?
Paytm ensures that the user’s money is kept secured under an Escrow account with a nationalized bank. It has received approval from the Reserve Bank of India as an e-wallet. Paytm has acquired the position of the most favourable digital payment platform in India because of its best security features and wonderful user interface.
Another reason for its success is the use of Verisign-certified SSL 18-bit encryption technology. This technology is important because it ensures that all the online information of the user is safe. The information includes password and other financial details. Thus, Paytm can be considered as the safest form of e-wallet because of its protection level.
Among many success stories of Paytm one of the most interesting one is that it can handle more than 5000 transactions per second. That implies its payment system is not only secure but even quite robust. It was possible for them because of the implementation of a simple and effective payment methodology.
Users don’t have to take much pain to make the payment. By simply scanning a QR code of a shop or by entering the mobile number of the recipient the payment is done. Apart from that, users can safely keep their money in the application and make the payment from the wallet. Though the users also have the option to pay directly from the bank using the application.
Secure transactions and high capacity are the two pillars of the success of the wallet. Every day more and more people are becoming part of Paytm for making the payment of the daily utilities and other expenses with much ease.
Achievements
Paytm saw a tremendous increase in its customer base after the government’s decision of demonetization. Because of demonetization, there was a lack of physical cash, and that forced people to switch either to plastic money in form of cards or digital payment methodologies. Most of the people preferred latter. As at that time Paytm was expanding it got a golden opportunity to gain more customers. This decision was like a catalyst that enabled Paytm to gain the position of e-payment application.
Recent surveys show that Paytm has surpassed the revenue of other similar payment applications in terms of users as well as revenue. Unlike other payment applications, Paytm is not only popular in big cities but also quite popular in small towns and villages. Slowly it is becoming the favourite payment application of the masses of people of India.
Expansions
In May 2017, Paytm got its recognition as a Paytm Payment bank. After that, a 5-member board committee was formed to take care of the physical expansion of the Paytm Banks. Headquartered in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India, Paytm renders its service only in India.?
With the introduction of a digital payment system that allowed the users to send money to other users, Paytm received its recognition as a payments bank. The main purpose of Paytm payments bank was to provide various banking services like a savings account, debit cards, and money transfer facilities to the existing Paytm customers.
In a fixed percentage ratio, the shares of the Paytm payments Banks are divided among Vijay Shekar Sharma who owns 51% stake where One97 communication owns 39% stake and the remaining stakes of 10% are with their subsidiary company. The payments bank is a separate entity from Paytm.
The recent reports mention that it holds a good percentage of market share among other e-payment companies. It also has plans to disburse small loans to the people. To improve its offline and online presence and also to enhance the customer’s satisfaction it acquired Shifu and Near.in.
Awards
Paytm is growing and to honour its success it received numerous prestigious awards. It got its recognition in the field of digital payment and e-commerce developers. Being awarded motivates it to remain determined to improve its products and services and thus enhance customer experience. No matter how small a feature maybe it has a dedicated team who is working towards making significant improvements. Over time, Paytm has always introduced small and effective features that have ensured that Paytm becomes a preferred digital payment platform for the users.
Conclusion
Paytm is one of the most successful e-wallet payment companies. It has revolutionized the online payment system in India. Also, India has become one of the leading countries in the world to have most online transactions. It has significantly contributed towards making people in India feel safer about online payment systems.
The success story of Paytm is awe-inspiring for all the budding entrepreneurs of India. If you have a great business idea then give a push to it. But make sure to obtain the guidance of business consultants who can provide you proper suggestions regarding your plan and also help you to overcome all the challenges that come in the path of success. The business consultants on SeekEx are highly experienced and thus you can always seek their advice whenever you are confused on path of your business. If you liked the story of Paytm, give a read to
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