Paytm's Vijay Shekhar Sharma on learning from company's public listing journey

Fintech firm Paytm was able to achieve Rs 10,000 crore in annualised revenue as it learnt the biggest lesson of its journey after its IPO (initial public offering) process in 2021, said the company's founder and CEO, Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

"We were a $20-billion company before the IPO, and, after that, suddenly people said that they could not see revenue (and) could not see profits," he said, in a conversation with YourStory Founder and CEO, Shradha Sharma, at TechSparks 2023, in Delhi.

The IPO experience pushed the team at Paytm to rally around and rework its strategy.

From that moment on, it was a "head down and execute" strategy for Paytm to get to the numbers that the firm has been able to achieve today, said Paytm's founder.

For the second quarter ended September 2023, the company recorded a revenue of Rs 2,519 crore, a 32% rise from a year ago. It narrowed its quarterly losses to Rs 291 crore, from Rs 571 crore a year ago.

"I truly feel privileged that when companies generally take 3-6 years to learn, it only took six months in our case," said Paytm's Sharma, recalling the tough funding environment experienced by the company during its IPO phase.

"Between 2010-2020, I could say we experienced an easier-than-today life in terms of fund raising, where metrics like number of transactions and users were used for traction projection," he said, adding that now a company gets funding only on the basis of the actual numbers of the projected traction.

"That is what happened while we were in the midst of an IPO," noted Sharma.

"We just knew that the market had tanked and we have to sort through that," he said, adding that it would have been much more painful if the company had moved from a high tide to a low tide.

Paytm's shares have gained nearly 84% as of the last closing price on Wednesday (November 29, 2023), from its 52-week low of Rs 471.15 on November 29, 2022. Listed in November 2021, the company's stock has lost about 60% compared with its issue price of Rs 2,150.

Paytm's shares closed at Rs 867.15 on Wednesday.