Corporate Grapevine

Published: Mar 15, 2022
Updated: Mar 15, 2022

PayTM: From hero to zero?

Once upon a time, One97 Communications, popularly known as PayTM, was the apple of investors’ eye. Every foreign investor wanted to invest in the company by pouring in billions of dollars. Not anymore. The company is now under investigation by the Reserve Bank of India for storing data outside India in China, and it has several investors from China.

Though PayTM denies storing data in China, the denial is a case of too little, too late.

Investors are selling off the company’s shares and its market price has plunged below Rs 700 a share. It’s a sharp drop of 70 per cent from its issue price of Rs 2,150 a piece. To make matters worse, the company founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma has made news for all the wrong reasons by ramming his car into a top cop’s car in New Delhi. If insiders are to be believed, the company’s stock will continue to fall and are likely to go below the Rs 500 mark soon. It’s a bitter lesson for small investors who had invested in the company after reading glowing accounts about a new age company in the media and glowing tribute by merchant brokers.