If you recently made a transaction or paid your bill on Paytm, thank this man – Vijay Shekhar Sharma for making your life easier. The founder of Paytm struggled a lot, faced failures, had sleepless nights, and took many risks to become what he is today.
See Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s biography visualized in this infographic and find out how he started Paytm. His success story will definitely inspire you.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s early life and family background
Sharma was born in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh. He belongs to a humble background where his father is a school teacher. During his childhood, he dreamt of becoming an engineer and to work in a company on a salary of Rs. 10,000.
Unlike many tech entrepreneurs in India, he did his schooling entirely in Hindi medium. He could not even speak and write in English till 12th.
The boy wanted to sit for IIT Entrance and other competitive exams but gave up because of his poor English.
Sharma moves to Delhi for further studies
Vijay Shekhar Sharma moved to Delhi after 12th and got enrolled at Delhi College of Engineering. In college, his biggest struggle was to understand English. He even bought Hindi-to-English translation books to learn the language.
Sharma then slowly lost his interest to sit in the classroom. Meanwhile, his dream of entrepreneurship started kicking off and internet became his playground.
He bought second hand books to learn about tech startups and Silicon Valley.
Sharma got inspired!
Sameer Bhatia, Yahoo co-founder David Filo, and other great internet entrepreneurs became his inspirations.
He started to bunk classes and moved to computer labs to learn coding and start something on his own.
Sharma graduated at the age of 19.
In an interview with the Economic Times, the Paytm founder even said ‘education is over-rated‘, and he completed his graduation only because of his mother.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma follows his entrepreneurship dreams
While we were having fun in college and thinking of getting a placement after graduation, Sharma dreamt big, something different unlike the rest of us. He had already started coding and making his own website during college days.
2 years later after creating the site, Sharma sold the website at Rs. 5 lakhs.
After graduation, Vijay Shekhar Sharma worked in multiple MNCs but not for a long time.
He even went to the US to work. But after working for a short duration, he came back and started his own internet company – One97 Communications.
From his journey, it is very clear that Sharma never wanted to work for others. Indeed, he focused on his entrepreneurship dreams and built something big.
Sharma’s success did not come overnight. He faced many hardships, from partners abandoning him, not getting investors to taking up odd jobs to support the company’s cash flow.
When 3G was launched in 2010, his company suffered to a massive extent but he soon came up with a new idea and thus Paytm was born.
Sharma becomes one of the richest men and most influential people on earth
Coming from a small town near Aligarh in UP with no knowledge of English, a man who once walked 14 kilometres to save Rs. 14 for a meal is now one of the most influential people on earth with a net worth of $2.4 billion (around Rs. 18,000 crore).
Paytm came into existence because of Sharma’s own creativity, ideas, sacrifices, years of hard work, and of course his determination towards achieving his goal. Nothing came so easily for him. He gave blood, sweat, and tears to build one of the largest companies in the world.
His inspiring story teaches us that success doesn’t come easily. It doesn’t matter in which part of the country you were born or in which school you studied. You need to dream big.
As he rightly sums up: ‘Go big or go home’
‘To the winners, who won because they didn’t give up.’ – Vijay Shekhar Sharma
Also read: How OYO Founder Ritesh Agarwal Started
