When Paytm Grows, India Grows — Key Takeaways from Our 23rd Annual General Meeting (AGM)

Today marks the day when we held our 23rd Annual General Meeting (AGM) on September 12, 2023, and we are thrilled to share the highlights of the insights on our growth journey and plans for the future followed by an overwhelming response from our shareholders.

The Founder & CEO, Vijay Shekar Sharma starts off with a heartfelt congratulations to Indian citizens for the successful G20 Digital Summit 2023 held in India wherein Paytm emerged as the biggest champions of India's digital infrastructure. We also got the opportunity to showcase our technology to leaders that came from different parts of the world.

As champions of merchants in India, we believe that widening accessibility for merchants will foster inclusive growth for our country. Setting off the wave of payment revolution that began with the launch of QR and soundbox, our next contribution will be towards revolutionizing finance through high quality small credit, mobile payment, and mobile credit.

Achieving Operational Profitability

We have achieved operating profitability well in advance. By deploying 87 lakh devices to our strong merchant base, we directly contribute to the growth of the Indian economy when our customers pay through Paytm devices. We have also built a strong network of loan distribution with our partners through our app.

“We are proud to continue our revenue momentum. We promised, we will be EBITDA before ESOP profitable and we achieved that three quarters ahead of time.

We have significantly improved our contribution profit, along with an improvement in profitability,” said Madhur Deora, Executive Director, President and Group Chief Financial Officer of Paytm.

Leading Digital Infrastructure?

We are the biggest champion of India's digital infrastructure as we build technology that caters to the MSME sector by understanding the needs of small vendors and merchants, thus, making payments a part of their everyday life. Paytm is leading through digital India encouragement from the regulator. Offering unparalleled full-stack solutions of hardware, software, and other financial services, we have expanded our deployment of devices.

Investing in AI is Investing in India’s Future

Discussing the future aspirations of the company, Vijay said, “Our next milestone is to make Paytm free cash flow positive in the near future, even as we make investments in innovative products and expand our distribution.” The major focus of the company is to invest in artificial intelligence (AI) to bring about the next technology revolution by building Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) software stack.

We believe that India can soon become a global superpower that will unlock avenues to lower costs as Paytm AI stack will serve as a backbone for building a secure financial system in India.

When Paytm Grows, India Grows — True Representation of Made in India

As a domestic champion, we represent the true essence of India by manufacturing products that are 100% indigenously developed. We have become a homegrown brand as our products are widely adopted across the country fulfilling the diverse needs of our merchants and consumers.

Leading Technology for India’s small merchants

Madhur Deora also shared his insights on how Paytm is the only company in India that offers scalable solutions such Paytm Postpaid, merchant loans, co-branded credit cards as some of our powerful financial services. “For small merchants, we have Paytm QR and Soundbox, for mid merchants, we have Soundbox, Card Machine and above that, we have an online payment gateway. Our merchants are also asking for omnichannel products, which we are helping them with.” he said during the AGM meet held on Tuesday Morning.

Robust Growth in Annual Performance

Madhur Deora states that there has been a dramatic scale up in annual performance, this growth has resulted from increase in payments volume, financial services as well as our commerce and cloud business. We now process ?13 lakh crore of annual GMV, meanwhile, we also receive government incentives for UPI. We are proud that Paytm continues to remain aligned with the government and regulator’s objective to increase digital payments in India.

We enable commerce for our merchant partners to grow their business by selling tickets, advertising, unlocking discounts and other loyalty services, along with cloud services such as the distribution of co-branded credit cards with SBI and HDFC. Our commerce and cloud business has made our payments business stronger which has resulted in overall merchant stickiness on the platform.

Paytm QR — a national asset

The AGM came to an end with the closing remarks of the MD & CEO, Vijay Shekhar Sharma thanking the shareholders for their energetic response on the company’s growth trajectory and for holding the vision of a bright future for the company in high spirits. He stated Paytm’s QR code discovery has become a national asset now. We have come a long way and there is still a long way to go as we stay committed to our mission of serving half a billion Indians and bringing the power of leading technology to every small merchant.