Paytm Building AI-Powered Financial Risk Management System, Says Vijay Shekhar Sharma

Paytm is building an India-scale artificial intelligence system, which will help financial institutes in capturing possible risks and frauds.

"Paytm is investing in AI with an eye on building artificial general intelligence software stack. We believe by building it in India we are not only making our country’s tech capability, also creating something that could be leveraged outside India," Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and chief executive officer of Paytm, wrote in a letter to shareholders released alongside the firm's annual report for FY23.

Beyond the payment and credit disbursement business, progress at the company's ONDC business is exciting, he wrote. "We have seen very encouraging early results of the same. In my opinion, in the next three years you will see some worthy numbers and results of hard work put in by the team."

Sharma expects 50 crore payment consumers and 10 crore merchants "not very far in future".

"We are not only beneficiaries but also the biggest champions of government and regulator-driven digital public infrastructure. In my opinion, the success of current digital public infrastructure is giving way to new services clearly in financial services, and also in new areas like health and retail," he said.

Paytm reported a 61% rise in revenue from operations to Rs 7,990 crore for FY23. Its Ebitda before ESOP costs stood at a negative Rs 176 crore for the year. Earlier this year, Paytm achieved its operating profitability milestone in Q3 FY23, ahead of Sharma's September 2023 quarter guidance. 

In its annual report, the company said that this performance was driven by sustained growth in revenue on account of platform expansion and increased monetisation, better profitability in the payments business as well as increased contribution of high growth, high margin businesses such as loan distribution and disciplined cost management.