Will the real Vijay Shekhar Sharma please stand up?

If you believe that actions speak louder than words, now would be a good time to take a long, hard look at Paytm’s founder.

Ashish K. Mishra

Mumbai

26 June 2020

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Till two hours before he actually left the building, nobody had a clue that Pravin Jadhav, the managing director and CEO of Paytm Money, was on his way out.

Far away from Paytm’s headquarters at B121, Sector 5, in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, Jadhav had spent a tense two months in Bengaluru moving in and out of discussions. First with Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the founder of Paytm, and later with Paytm Money’s board of directors, a mix of employees and loyalists; the only director missing was Cyrus Khambata, the former executive director of Central Depository Services. At the heart of the issue was a promise made by Sharma to Jadhav some three years back, that in exchange for building Paytm Money, Jadhav would be rewarded with a minority stake of 25% in Paytm Money.

Come 2020, what had been agreed by both gentlemen verbally had not materialized on paper.

Paytm Money had done well. With claims of 6 million users, and more than Rs 5,000 crore in

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