Paytm founder & CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma on Tuesday stated competitors in the payments space will turn out to be more mature. “In the next two years, every payments business in this country will talk sustainability, profitability,” Sharma stated in a conversation with Anant Goenka, executive director, The Indian Express, at the India Digital Summit.
Commenting on the competitive situation in payments, Sharma observed that significantly like in other industries there are constantly a number of starters just after which there will be a period of rationalisation. “When we started as a payments business, our challengers were different, today they don’t exist. And I can say that two years ahead our challengers will be different from those today,” he stated.
While the cumulative chance was huge and whilst it would be ‘fancy’ to count the quantity of payments transactions, all players he stated would be concerned about whether or not they can monetise the client base.
Sharma observed that payments are pretty basic so inevitably a variety of choices will exist, which includes credit cards, even though the way these would be applied would alter. “What, however, sets Paytm aside in the game is that we do not depend on any outside player to build on scale and abilities,” he stated,” Sharma added. “There will be face payments too in this country very soon,” he stated, “ where faces would be scanned to make a payment”.
Banks and fin-techs are co-current, Sharma stated, adding they are all babies of a regulator referred to as the central bank. “We are happy to have built partnerships with banks. When it comes to tech companies, if there is a level playing field, we are the unambiguous winners,” he stated. He stated concentration of energy could not cease progress in technologies else we would not have observed so a lot of technologies giants. So a lot of large giants have necessary to obtain other firms, he pointed out.
Assuaging issues about safety that arise out of Paytm becoming backed by Chinese investors, Sharma stated “at least in our board and in our operations, we run all our software technology platforms by ourselves…no shareholder has a say on what we should do. Effectively, all shareholders are treated as commercial shareholders. The board seat and the board control is in India’s hands. We at Paytm believe that we would stand for an opportunity that India creates.”