Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma sees huge opportunity in Electric Vehicles

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, whose company Paytm is backed by global investment giants like Alibaba and SoftBank, said that India can become a global reference for electric mobility.

Consumer technology is space Paytm's founder wants India to create global impact. He likes to see India champion electric vehicles and sustainability. "We can take a lead in electric mobility and become a global reference point,” Sharma was quoted by ET as saying.

Sharma had in an earlier interview said that if he has to start from scratch again then he would prefer to venture into Electric Vehicle. However, he has not made any investment announcement as of yet.

India is still in nascent stage of being a leader in EV market. The Indian government is aggressively pushing towards becoming electric vehicle market to create job opportunities and help economy rise.

The government has set a deadline of 2030 to turn into electric vehicle market. It has taken a few steps amd is promoting Power PSUs to take the lead in setting up EV charging infrastructure in the country. The EV charging infrastructure would need large investments.

At present, China manufactures the maximum number of electric vehicles globally. In last few years, India has surfaced as one of the key markets for EV manufacturers.

Meanwhile, Niti Aayog, which has drafted a policy for electric vehicles, and has suggested that EVs could have green number plates. It is also planning to offer free parking for EVs three years and removal of toll charges on them.

Paytm founder hails the current government for its policies. During demonetization implementation, the digital platform like Paytm was one of the companies which got a significant boost.

Sharma believes that the time was ripe for entrepreneurs in India to create products for the local market. In coming time he sees Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to lead the innovation.

Also read: To counter WhatsApp, Paytm launches ‘Inbox’ – a messaging platform with in-chat payments

Recently his digital payment firm reported touching $10 billion valuations as existing and former employees are reportedly selling their equity through a secondary sale. The secondary sale is said to be in tune with $50-70 million.

If it happens, the company will be the second startup to become decacorn. 'Decacorn' term is referred to privately held startups that are valued $10 billion and beyond. At present, home-grown Flipkart is valued at $12.6 billion.

Besides this year, the payment company has planned to invest Rs 500 crore to conduct merchant training and awareness initiatives to scale up its operations across the country.

Last week, Paytm also launched ‘Paytm for Business’, a standalone app for merchants to track payments instantly, navigate through the past collections and track settlements made to their preferred bank accounts. Businesses can also generate QR code to accept payments.