How it all started?
Back in early 2000’s even in the rarest of your dreams, had you ever wondered that ten or twenty years down the line you would go cashless in the market and pay bills digitally? No, isn’t it? But gradually this became true with Paytm. Paytm is now, the largest growing private firm of our country. It has made us believe that without having cash in your hands you can still step out just with your handy gadgets. Moreover, Paytm employees are earning way more than you and I can expect.
Ever since the ban of 500 and 1000 rupee notes, Paytm has made its way in the market, especially in the metro cities. People have shifted to digital payments which boosted the user base of Paytm significantly.
And that’s how it Happened..
But who thought that Paytm employees will end up being Crorepatis? Hard to believe? But it’s true.
They made a killing by selling shares to the tune of around Rs 100 crore, said a report in The Economic Times.
Over 500 Paytm employees were with the Noida based company. But around 47 out of them offloaded a share in the parent company to a mix of both internal and external buyers. They grabbed this opportunity to use their employee stock options, mainly, after Paytm’s valuation reached $4.8 billion last year.
This was only because of its growing business in the past 4-5 months.
Nearly 100 Paytm employees have sold their shares in the company over the past two years. But even after that it remains a private firm, according to the report.
Reports suggested that some of the Paytm employees sold a portion of their Employee stock option plans in 2016. It was sold to external board members like Uber executive Amit Singhal, and Facebook’s first woman engineer, Ruchi Sanghvi, etc.
According to a tweet put out by Vijay Shekhar Sharma, (founder & CEO of Paytm), “In late February, Paytm had achieved a subscriber base of 200 million users.” Moreover, Paytm aims to reach 500 million users by 2020.
“Double century! Next milestone, 500 Million by 2020. Thank you India,” tweeted Sharma.
Shares from other International companies
Recent media report indicates the company may soon get $1.5 billion from eBay and China’s Tencent. Alibaba, along with its affiliate Ant Financial is the single largest shareholder of One97 Communications, the partner of Paytm with a 40% stake in the company. On the other hand, these two entities along with Vijay Shekhar Sharma and early investor SAIF Partners together won 95 percent stake in the company.
Paytm and Snapdeal are reportedly holding early talks to explore a merger between the Snapdeal and Paytm’s e-commerce site that it calls Paytm Mall.
According to a report in Economic Times, the talks were initiated by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. However after a while the talks were put on hold, though are chances that they would resume once the consent of all stakeholders has been taken.
“Snapdeal and Paytm have held talks to merge and this deal is driven by Alibaba,” noted the ET report, citing an unnamed source.
Paytm has about 21.5 crore subscribers, as against this, SBI has 20.7 subscribers. Paytm does about 20 crore transactions a month. While according to RBI data, all other e-wallets put together do 19 crore transactions.
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