In 2010, when Paytm was started, India becoming a cashless economy was unfathomable. It was Paytm that gave people the power to pay through their mobile phones. Fast forward to today and the fintech giant has emerged as India’s leading payments and financial services company. Such is its reach that “Paytm Karo” has now become a synonym for payments through QR Codes. Paytm’s entrepreneurial growth into becoming India’s leading payments company will now be taught to future business leaders at Harvard Business School (HBS).
Alvaro Rodriguez Arregui, a senior lecturer at Harvard took to Linkedin to share the news. As a part of the Global Tech Entrepreneurship course, students of Harvard Business School will look at Paytm’s journey’s in two parts. The first phase will explore Paytm till 2016 and how it established itself in the Indian ecosystem that existed at the time, the challenges and opportunities it faced with respect to funding and talent. The discussion will also include the infrastructure built by Paytm to become India’s leading payments company. In the second phase, the company’s business model including the businesses it has built post the introduction of UPI in 2016 will be looked at.
Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma met Arregui at Harvard Business School and he wrote on Linkedin “Thank you Professor. It is humbling to see your interest and insights on Paytm.”
This is the second time Paytm will be taught at HBS. Back in 2017, HBS’ India Research Centre (IRC) included Paytm in the curriculum. The study titled ‘Paytm: Building a Payments Network’ was taught both within and outside Harvard. As a part of that study, Paytm’s focus on enabling offline payments even for the smallest merchants by using smartphones and QR codes was explored.
Paytm has been at the forefront of India’s mobile payments revolution. Its mobile-first solutions have simplified payments and financial services for people, making them more accessible. The company is the leader in offline payments with 75 lakh devices including the iconic Soundbox and PoS deployed at the end of May 2023. With average monthly transacting users of 9.2 Crore, the Paytm Super App continues to see robust expansion of its consumer base.
Driven by growth in payments and loan distribution business, Paytm reported a 51% YoY growth in revenue from operations to ₹2,334 crore Q4FY23. The company reported an operating profit for the second straight quarter. It reported EBITDA before ESOP cost of ₹234 crore, including the full-year UPI incentive. In the previous quarter, Paytm achieved its milestone of operating profitability, much ahead of its September 2023 guidance.
