Billionaire investor Warren Buffett may soon have his first business partner in India. His conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, will reportedly invest between $314 million and $357 million (22 billion to 25 billion rupees) for a 3% to 4% stake in One97 Communications, the parent company of Paytm, a digital payments firm.
According to the Indian newspaper Mint, which first reported the news, the deal would likely value One97 at $10 billion to $12 billion. The company most recently raised money at a $7 billion in 2017, following an investment from Japanese conglomerate SoftBank. India’s youngest billionaire, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, owns 16% of One97. Forbes estimates his net worth at $1.7 billion, based on the earlier valuation.
Berkshire Hathaway and Paytm did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Sharma, 40, cofounded One97 Communications in 2001, then launched Paytm nine years later. Paytm, which specializes in mobile payments, has 250 million registered users and processes 7 million transactions each day. It also operates e-commerce website Paytm Mall and Paytm Payments Bank, India’s first mobile bank.
The son of a schoolteacher, Sharma grew up in a small town in north India and finished high school at age 14. He couldn’t attend college until a year later because he was too young to take the entrance exam. He built his first web portal, Indiasite.net, while at Delhi Technological University and sold it for $1 million after graduating.
Sharma started Paytm as a mobile wallet but soon turned it into a large platform used for grocery shopping, flight booking and utility bill payments. The business grew even bigger in 2016, after India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, announced the demonetization of 86% of the country’s paper currency. Paytm unveiled a major ad campaign to capitalize on the news and also rolled out app versions in 11 languages to expand its traction in rural areas. Within 10 days of the launch, the number of daily transactions on the platform doubled.
Sharma debuted among the World’s Billionaires in 2017, at age 38. “2017 will be ours! How could it not be?” he told Paytm employees at a party in January of that year. It seems 2018 has brought good fortune as well.
