Vijay Shekhar Sharma wants the company that helped move India's everyday payments onto the mobile phone to play the same role in artificial intelligence. At the 26th Annual General Meeting of One 97 Communications, which operates Paytm, the founder and CEO said Paytm is committed to taking its experience of "delivering a fintech revolution in the country" into the "AI revolution in the country."
Sharma linked the move into AI to how far Paytm's payments business has come. He said the fintech business has matured over the last 10 years to the point where it generates free cash that can be invested in future growth. "And that brings me to the AI," he said.
He described Paytm's journey as one built in layers. Payments came first, and Sharma said the business was built "on zero base", able to remain profitable without depending on merchant fees or financial support from the government. Over the last two years, he said, Paytm has "come out as a strong merchant acquiring business." Financial services came next, and Sharma said the payment franchise maturing into higher margin financial services distribution "gives us an edge." AI is the layer he is now adding on top.
The shift has been building for some time. At the 2024 AGM, he spoke of India's opportunity to extend its fintech leadership into AI. By November 2025, he was telling analysts that "AI is a revenue line item." This year, he told shareholders that Paytm is "on the forefront of using AI." The effort now carries a name, Paytm Intelligence, or Pi.
What Sharma sees as Paytm's advantage in this transition is the reach it built during the payments years. "Our distribution and our scale of reach in the country offers us a capability and opportunity of bringing in advantages of AI to the small and medium businesses in India," he said. He wants Paytm to remain the "payment acquirer of choice for small, large, all merchants in India," and those are the businesses he now plans to bring AI to.
Paytm's latest earnings release shows that work is already under way, describing AI as driving "sharper decisions for our teams, greater productivity and intelligence for merchants, and deeper personalisation for consumers."
For Sharma, the opportunity is bigger than one company. "In my view, AI offers a once in a lifetime opportunity for our country," he said. He closed his address to shareholders with a commitment to building "a scalable, profitable, very large Paytm as a business in India and from India."
