INTELLIGENCE · PERSON DOSSIER
UPDATED 2026-08-13Vijay Shekhar Sharma
Founders & CEOs
One97 Communications / Paytm · India
Net worth
$1.6bn
Stake in One97 Communications
19.31% of equity as at 31 March 2025
Significant Beneficial Owner
Only Significant Beneficial Owner of One97 Communications with effect from 14 August 2023
Stake in Paytm Payments Bank
51% personally; One97 Communications holds the other 49%
Acquisition of Antfin stake
Agreed in August 2023 to buy 10.3% of One97 from Antfin (Netherlands) Holding B.V. for about $628m
Identity & Ownership
Current role
Chairman, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, One97 Communications Limited (Paytm)
One97's FY2025 annual report lists him as Chairman, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. He signs the company's financial statements and its CEO/CFO certification alongside Madhur Deora.
Board tenure
Director of One97 Communications since 22 December 2000 (DIN 00466521)
Date of appointment recorded in the corporate governance section of One97's FY2025 annual report.
Term as MD and CEO
Reappointed as Managing Director and CEO until December 2027
Reported by ETHRWorld (Economic Times) in May 2022 following shareholder approval. The company's own filings confirm he remains in the role.
Born
7 June 1978, Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India
Third of four children of Sulom Prakash Sharma, a schoolteacher, and Asha Sharma. Wikipedia is the only readily available source for the exact date; the year 1978 is corroborated by the Suveen Sinha book excerpt published by Scroll.
Nationality
Indian
Forbes records his citizenship as India and his residence as Delhi.
Based
Delhi, India
Residence listed on his Forbes billionaires profile.
Company base
Corporate office in Noida, Uttar Pradesh; registered office in Nehru Place, New Delhi
One97 Communications letterhead on its exchange filings: One Skymark, Tower-D, Sector 98, Noida, and 136 Devika Tower, Nehru Place, New Delhi. CIN L72200DL2000PLC108985.
Listed vehicle
One97 Communications Limited — BSE scrip code 543396, NSE symbol PAYTM
Identifiers as used on the company's own filings to the two exchanges.
Education
B.Tech in electronics and communications, Delhi College of Engineering (entered 1994)
He entered the college in 1994, not yet sixteen, with special permission from the university, having finished class twelve at fourteen; his schooling had been in the Hindi medium. Account from Suveen Sinha's 'The Tip of the Iceberg', excerpted by Scroll.
Family
Married to Mridula Parashar Sharma since 2005; one child
Per Wikipedia. Forbes separately lists him as married with one child.
Personal Wealth & Holdings
Net worth
$1.6bn
Forbes real-time billionaires estimate, 12 August 2026. Forbes attributes the wealth to financial technology and classes him as self-made. Forbes valuations are estimates, not audited figures.
Stake in One97 Communications
19.31% of equity as at 31 March 2025
57,845,053 shares (9.07%) held directly, plus a beneficial interest in 65,335,101 shares (10.24%) held by Resilient Asset Management B.V., an overseas entity 100% owned by him. Disclosed in One97's FY2025 corporate governance report.
Significant Beneficial Owner
Only Significant Beneficial Owner of One97 Communications with effect from 14 August 2023
Stated in the FY2025 annual report. The company itself is disclosed as professionally managed with no identifiable promoter.
Stake in Paytm Payments Bank
51% personally; One97 Communications holds the other 49%
Ownership split cited by Business Standard from Paytm Payments Bank's FY25 annual report, and repeated by Sharma himself in April 2024. One97 accounted for the bank as a 49% associate.
Acquisition of Antfin stake
Agreed in August 2023 to buy 10.3% of One97 from Antfin (Netherlands) Holding B.V. for about $628m
Bought off-market through Resilient Asset Management B.V., his wholly owned Netherlands entity. The company said the purchase would take his holding to 19.42% and end Antfin's position as largest shareholder.
Remuneration
₹44.73m in FY2024-25 (₹40.00m salary plus ₹4.73m of perquisites)
Disclosed in the FY2025 annual report, which notes there was no change in his remuneration for the year and that perquisites are capped at 25% of fixed pay.
Stock options
Holds no ESOPs; surrendered all 21,000,000 options on 16 April 2025
The 2.1 crore options had been granted in FY2021-22 under the One97 Employees Stock Option Scheme 2019. The company recorded an accelerated charge of ₹4,924m as an exceptional item and returned the options to the ESOP pool.
First billion
Ranked India's youngest billionaire in March 2017 with a net worth of $1.3bn
Forbes India, reporting the 2017 World's Billionaires list.
Personal investment vehicle
VSS Investments, a SEBI-registered Category II alternative investment fund with a ₹30 crore target corpus
Announced October 2023; ₹20 crore base size with a ₹10 crore green shoe, targeting startups in AI, electric vehicles, environment and sustainability.
Background
Hindi-medium school in Harduaganj, a small town near Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh
His father taught at the school; his mother was a housewife. Teachers moved him up grades repeatedly and he finished class twelve at fourteen, then waited a year because no engineering college would admit him before fifteen.
Taught himself the subject vocabulary by reading two textbooks at once, one Hindi and one English
Described in Suveen Sinha's 'The Tip of the Iceberg' (Portfolio Penguin): he read physics in Hindi first, then in English, cross-checking terms such as 'momentum' against 'samveg'.
indiasite.net, launched while at college in 1997 and sold about two years later for roughly $1m
Per Wikipedia; the sale price is not corroborated by a primary document and should be treated as reported rather than confirmed.
Founded One97 Communications in 2000 as a mobile value-added services business
The company began by selling mobile content — news, cricket scores, ringtones and exam results — before payments. His directorship dates from 22 December 2000.
Launched Paytm in 2010 as One97's prepaid recharge and digital payments platform
Wikipedia's Paytm article dates the launch to August 2010 in Noida with an initial investment of $2m; its One97 Communications article says 2009. The 2010 date is the one used in Fintechly's own index record and in most Indian coverage.
United Nations Environment Programme Advocate for Clean Air since December 2017
Stated in One97's FY2025 annual report, which says he helps drive UNEP's global BreatheLife campaign on air quality.
Member of the advisory board of the Green Digital Finance Alliance
Disclosed in One97's FY2025 annual report.
Named to the TIME 100 list of the world's most influential people in 2017, in the Titans category
Listed among the 2017 Titans alongside Jeff Bezos, Janet Yellen and Jean Liu. Cited to the Internet Archive capture of TIME's 2017 collection, which returns the live page's entry for him.
Has backed roughly 80 startups personally
Per Wikipedia, which names NoBroker, HackerEarth, Treebo, Bombay Shirt Company, Kawa Space and Karkinos Healthcare among them. Individual cheque sizes are not disclosed.
Notable Coverage
25 items
Delhi High Court orders Paytm Payments Bank wound up and appoints a liquidator
Record quarterly EBITDA as Paytm's recovery continues
One97 reports its first full year of profit
RBI cancels Paytm Payments Bank's licence
One97 Communications told the exchanges that the cancellation had no financial impact on the company, saying that as previously disclosed on 1 March 2024 it had no exposure to the bank or material business arrangements with it. Sharma held 51% of the bank personally.
Paytm Payments Services wins its RBI payment aggregator authorisation
Rejects the idea that Paytm inspired demonetisation, and calls for Indian AI sovereignty
Ant Group affiliate exits Paytm's register entirely
Business Standard recalled his 2016 remark to PTI on the ownership question: 'We are as Indian as Maruti.'
SEBI settles the ESOP proceedings; Sharma barred from fresh ESOPs for three years
The applicants settled without admitting or denying the findings of fact and conclusions of law. One97 filed the order with the stock exchanges the same day.
Surrenders 2.1 crore stock options worth about ₹1,800 crore
The company said the surrender would lower ESOP expenses in future years by an equivalent amount.
Enforcement Directorate serves a FEMA show-cause notice on One97 and certain directors and officers
The company said it was seeking legal advice and evaluating remedies. The auditor flagged the matter as an emphasis of matter without modifying its opinion.
SEBI issues an administrative warning over related-party transactions with the payments bank
Paytm said it believed it had consistently acted in compliance with regulation and that there was no impact on its financials or operations.
Steps down from the board of Paytm Payments Bank
One97 said it supported the bank's move to a board of independent and executive directors only, and that the bank would begin the process of appointing a new chairman.
SEBI show-cause notice challenges the 2.1 crore ESOPs granted to him
One97 said it had submitted a preliminary response and was seeking further information from SEBI, and that the notice had no impact on its Q4 FY24 or Q1 FY25 results. The applicants later settled without admitting or denying the findings of fact and conclusions of law.
Paytm shares fall 42% in three sessions after the RBI order
Paytm denied reports of an Enforcement Directorate investigation into the company, its associates or Sharma over possible money laundering.
RBI orders Paytm Payments Bank to stop deposits and credit transactions
One97 said user balances in savings accounts, wallets, FASTags and NCMC accounts were unaffected, that it would 'be working only with other banks, and not with the PPBL', and that it expected a worst-case impact of ₹300-500 crore on annual EBITDA. It added that Sharma had reconfirmed he had taken no margin loans and pledged no shares.
RBI fines Paytm Payments Bank ₹5.39 crore for KYC and cyber-security lapses
The RBI said the action addressed regulatory compliance deficiencies and was not intended to pronounce on the validity of any transaction or agreement with customers.
Buys 10.3% of One97 from Ant Group affiliate Antfin for about $628m
Arrested and bailed over a Delhi road collision
No public comment from Sharma is recorded in the report.