One97 Communications Ltd. was founded in December 2000 by Vijay Shekhar Sharma in New Delhi, India with just Rs. 10 in his pocket. The company initially focused on telecom value-added services and later pivoted to digital payment and financial solutions, including the launch of the Paytm brand in 2009 as a digital payments platform to facilitate cashless transactions for users.
Since then, the company has reached some major user milestones. Paytm was the first digital wallet to receive RBI and SEBI licenses for payments banks and stock-broking and IRDAI license for insurance broking. In 2017, Paytm crossed 200 million active wallet users and won “the best digital wallet” award the same year. As of August 2023, Paytm Payments Bank recorded over 50 million UPI Lite transactions with over 9 million users and over 100 million KYC wallet customers. In 2021, One97 executed the largest IPO in Indian history with over 8.5 crore total equity issue size aggregating to Rs. 18,300 crore.
The platform also boasts one of the highest user strengths of any product built and launched in India. As of 2024-2025, One97 Communications (Paytm) reported more than 150 million monthly active users, marking continued growth in digital payments adoption and an undisputed leadership in merchant payments with 1.3 crore (13 million) merchant device subscriptions in MSME and enterprise segments. The current employee fleet of One97 is more than 10,000 strong with global reach and international offices. One of its major international ventures is through “PayPay” in japan through a major joint venture.
The story of Paytm is not just one of entrepreneurial success, but of a company that facilitated the leadership of India in global digital payments. Today 49% of all global digital payments happen solely in India through the UPI payment system. Vijay Shekhar and One97 team did not just pioneer the reality of this achievement but majorly power it through Paytm with millions of payments everyday.
| One97’s current user strength | 85 million monthly active | Market cap | 83,241 cr. |
| Q1 FY26 revenue | 1918 Cr. | Current price | Rs. 1303 |
| YoY growth | 27.6% | ROE | -10.3% |
The story of Vijay Shekhar Sharma
Vijay Shekhar Sharma was born in Uttar Pradesh in 1978, to a humble family with humble financial means.He completed engineering at Delhi College of Engineering at just 19, but struggled greatly with English, coming from a Hindi-medium background – a factor that he admitted often made him felt isolated and underestimated in the urban student community.
During his college years, Vijay said he was inspired by Silicon Valley successes such as Yahoo and also dreamed of studying abroad, but financial constraints kept him in India. Instead, he poured his entrepreneurial energy into launching indiasite.net, a web portal he sold for $1 million, and subsequently founded XS Communications, which provided content management solutions.
He used the profits from his previous ventures and founded One97 Communications in 2000. The company initially provided telecom value-added services like SMS-based content and marketing for mobile phones at a time when internet penetration in India was low. Seeking to democratize information and financial services through mobile technology, Sharma pushed One97 into newer spaces despite skepticism, as his board and early investors preferred focusing on B2B services.
The pivotal moment for Sharma came in 2010 when he decided to Launch Paytm(Pay Through Mobile), hedging all of his bets on the future of India’s mobile revolution. At that time, he had not even foreseen the digital payment revolution that India would have, yet he invested all his savings, took long term loans at huge interest rates, even mortgaged his house to make Paytm possible.
Paytm was not without its challenges, Paytm initially faced a lot of regulatory hurdles with securing licenses from RBI, SEBI for digital wallet services in India and also met a lot of skepticism from investors because the mobile segment in India had itself not developed yet, reliable internet for payments was still a far cry when Paytm launched. However in 2016, Vijay Shekhar saw his investments and effort materialise in the aftermath of demonetization which invalided Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes; overnight millions of users turned to digital wallets especially on Paytm.
To solve the problem of consumer confidence, One97 ran a very successful mass-marketing slogan “Paytm karo” which is still audible in every Paytm merchant soundbox which is widely accessible to everyone irrespective of the size of their business. From fruit sellers to large supermarkets, “Paytm karo” was something you could hear everywhere. This marketing campaign along with the next huge boost from the covid pandemic, which shifted billions of people to online payment platforms from traditional cash helped Vijay Secure investments from global giants like Alibaba, Ant Financial, and SoftBank, leveraging their resources and expertise to scale even more rapidly. From facing language based prejudice to building the backbone of the rural-urban world, Vijay Shekhar Sharma came a long way.
One97 communications product portfolio
| Product Subsidiary Full Name | Stock Name / Status | User Strength (millions) | Revenue (₹ crore) |
| Paytm Payments Services Ltd. (Merchant Services) | PAYTM (Listed) | 40 | 1200 |
| Paytm Entertainment Ltd. (Digital Goods) | Private Subsidiary | 20 | 600 |
| Paytm Financial Services Ltd. (Financial Services) | PAYTM (Listed) | 15 | 500 |
| Orbgen Technologies Pvt Ltd. (Ticketing – BookMyShow) | Private Subsidiary | 5 | 300 |
| Others (Various smaller subsidiaries & products) | Mixed | 5 | 200 |
One97 communication market dominance strategy
1) Product and infrastructure building
One97 invested heavily in building a robust technological backbone to support high transaction volumes even before digital payments became mainstream in India, now they process over 2 billion transactions annually on their own infrastructure which gives them the technological edge over their competitors. They were the first to introduce market innovation such as QR code payments, AI-driven analytics, UPI integration, and IoT, enabling seamless, secure, and scalable digital payment experiences. They simply made it difficult for competitors to replicate their business formula because their formula was made on successful product innovation.
2) Merchant network and Ecosystem strategy
One97 established an extensive network of over 24 million registered merchants by Q2 FY2024, covering more than 90% of India’s retail sector from kirana stores to large enterprises. This large-scale merchant onboarding, enabled by a dedicated field force, helped Paytm reach users even in remote areas and made everyday payments of all scale, small and large transactions, from the smallest shop owners to large supermarket retail outlets possible and seamless. Even today, with several competitors in the UPI app space itself, One97 communication faces almost none in the merchant networking sector because it has all been captured early by them with a great product that merchants do not want to switch away from.
3) Brand building and user acquisition
Paytm’s strategy prioritized the “next billion” Indian users, emphasizing regional language support, simple interfaces for first-time internet users, and aggressive mass-market advertising (the iconic “Paytm Karo” campaign). The company leveraged partnerships with several organisations such as Uber, IRCTC, Shopify, AWS and several others offering a direct payment bridge to the Paytm UPI app. Customers did not have to click on the UPI option and select a payment app or go through with entering their bank details for a NEFT transaction; the paytm app would show up as a payment option on the payment page itself, with the amount and transaction details loaded, all the user had to do was enter the UPI pin and the transaction was done. Paytm took this ease-of-transaction model and extended services on the paytm app covering mobile recharges, utility bills, ticket booking, recurring payments, and many more. All forms of payment were just a UPI PIN away directly through the Paytm app.
4) Market Adaptability
A landmark in Paytm’s dominance was its readiness during the 2016 demonetization, capitalizing on India’s abrupt turn to digital payments due to the ban on high-value cash notes. Paytm’s infrastructure allowed it to scale overnight, onboarding millions of new users and merchants. The subsequent integration with UPI accelerated its growth even further. The company also expanded smartly into banking, lending, insurance, and investment, ensuring that users had all their financial needs met on the app itself. To make this possible, Paytm partnered with several banks across India, both small and large, rural and urban to make banking operations of every Indian citizen as accessible and fast as possible. Today, Paytm’s subsidiary services disburse huge loans for businesses and personal use in lakhs and even microfinance loans worth a few thousand in minutes. One97 communication effectively cut off the need to wait in queues for banking operations, making everyday life much easier for the common man.
The One97 and RBI feud
On January 31st 2024, RBI essentially ordered Paytm Payments Bank Limited (PPBL), a wholly owned subsidiary of One97 communications to cease accepting fresh deposits, wallet top-ups, and credit transactions after February 29, 2024. Specifically, PPBL was barred from onboarding new customers and facilitating deposits or credit transactions in wallets, FASTags, prepaid instruments, and savings accounts linked to PPBL after the stipulated date. Paytm continued to operate its UPI merchant services, and wallet transactions through partner banks but PPBL was the banking armchair of Paytm which had been taken away hugely hindering operations.
RBI’s directive was a result of “persistent non-compliance” by One97 communications regarding the lack of regulatory audit or investigations and lapses in governance models regarding concerns over large volumes of accounts that had not completed their KYC, questionable transactions amounting to several hundred crores, and many other regulatory lapses. RBI said that prior warnings had been issued to PPBL since 2022 but they failed to address any of the above concerns. Such findings underscored risks to the integrity and stability of the financial system, compelling RBI to take unprecedented restrictive steps.
This regulatory measure, attracted a lot of attention especially from personalities in the fintech sector such as BharatPe founder Ashneer Grover who called RBI’s move as “Doglapan” – or hypocrisy; that on one hand they want to strengthen the UPI system in India but at the same time they have heavy-handed sophisticated regulatory measures and also heavily penalise home grown fintech leaders. He said this can lead to effects such as investors losing confidence in Indian digital payments companies, loss of innovation and disincentivise younger entrepreneurs from entering the market in this space.
In response to RBI’s actions against PPBL, One97 ensured their commitment to regulatory compliance and customer welfare and built a system that can facilitate better regulatory oversight over banking operations under PPBL and address all the previously flagged out concerns by RBI. Additionally One97 accelerated its plans to shift its payment and financial service operations to a broad network of partner banks, effectively decoupling critical services from Paytm Payments Bank.
The One97 and RBI incidence exposed the criticalities of being a fintech company in India handling a large sum of payments, where you critical business operations also have to handle the load of all the regulatory requirements that the RBI will mandate you to follow in this space, failing which you may be heavily penalised. This sparked a question in the Indian market regarding whether maintaining the integrity of the financial system is worth effectively breaking down one of the large fintechs that support the system to begin with?
FAQs
1. What is One97 Communications, and how is it related to Paytm?
One97 Communications is the company behind Paytm; it owns it and runs the whole business.
2. What year did Paytm launch, and what was its original function?
Paytm started in the year 2010. In the initial stages, it was used only to load money into the phone’s account.
3. What made Paytm grow so big and popular in India so fast?
When the big cash notes got banned in 2016, everybody suddenly needed digital payment apps like Paytm.
4. Apart from just sending and receiving money, what other services does Paytm offer?
Now you can do banking, buy insurance, get loans, invest money, shop online, and pay all bills. 5. How did Paytm help people who had never used banks before? Paytm made digital money so easy that even folks without bank accounts could start using it.
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