Vijay Shekhar Sharma on Building Enduring Platforms | TUCIBIL Credit Conference 2026

Vijay ji, first of all, thank you very much for being with us. You came from Delhi today, just flew in. Thank you for taking the trouble. We are taking a leaf out of your book. Everyone says 'I paid him via Paytm' or 'I made the payment via Paytm.' So thank you for leading the way.

It's truly a privilege to have you. I got a warm... Actually, every person should have the Paytm app and a good Cibil score. You are talking about AI. It's interesting that from my calendar, I got a message from Paytm today asking if I want a ₹50,000 loan. It's amazing, I don't know how. But first, I want to say that we know you as an amazing entrepreneur. I have huge respect for entrepreneurs in India. When you started your journey, ease of doing business wasn't there. You went through a tough journey. I have seen many entrepreneurs myself. I made some seed investments—I call them expensive PhDs. I don't know if money will come. But you joined engineering at 15, graduated at 19, and while in college at Delhi College of Engineering, you started your first startup, IndiaSite.net. Can you tell us about that?

It would have guessed it. My father sent my cousin to check on me. His name was Gyanesh. He said, 'Go see what this boy is doing. Why is he giving him money?' And that happened. After that, you started 197 Communications. In 2000, but I don't know how everyone knows you as the Paytm guru. But when you started 197 Communications, it was mobile content: news, cricket scores, jokes, exam results. Not exam questions, exam results. So through this time, technology has changed dramatically. You had barely 1G, 2G, then 3G, and the iPhone came. Can you talk a little about your transition from this into payments?

That's very interesting. You said—I was going to ask you—you caught the technology absolutely perfectly. You caught the wave. I wanted to ask the audience how many know the full expansion of Paytm? Paytm mobile used to be very strange. Earlier, people would call on TV and say, 'Vijay, what should I call this?' I said, 'Paytm'—it's a brand. That's the power of branding.

I want to ask a question. November 8, 2016. Where were you?

Absolutely. Fantastic. And this is one of the persons who is definitely delighted with demonetization. Everyone was confused, but you were very nice.

You have said in an interview that you want to make 197 Communications and Paytm as AI-first companies. What does that mean? Earlier, Sandeep sir was talking, and if Sandeep sir is in this audience, I want to say in front of you: a leader who removed ratings in the company did this thing, and such a mesmerizing conversation was going on. I was also thinking how he is talking so much. So for him it was... Now going back to AI. Fundamentally, let's talk about the concept of what AI trigger is. Typically, we always needed something as an assistant. The computer ATM came, where you could deposit and withdraw money. Computers did a lot of work slowly, slowly. But human superiority always remained: you know what you want to do. Around us, except for humans, the maximum brain is considered, say, a chimpanzee, or the generation that we believe has intelligence. So intelligence was an exclusivity of humans. AI has just reset that. Now the machine can be equal and more intelligent in a topic, and over all topics, it's actually phenomenal for humankind. It's not a discovery of electricity or the wheel. It's literally that you now have a capability that there is somebody, something, rather than body, who is more capable than an individual could be. And that would mean extraordinary amounts of productivity, extraordinary outcomes, and productive life that we all will live. Just like right now, many of us don't know how life used to be before WhatsApp, Paytm, and QR—before smartphones, we don't know life. I can take a bet that from 2030 onwards, many of us will not be able to believe that there was a life without these machines. How are you? Very serious? You should be a link, my friend. You don't know what childhood was like. Mom used to scroll pages, right-click open, then scroll again. Then a pop-up would come. To get knowledge from one page, we used to browse so many pages. That's how we will talk. And you have already seen it. This is the nearest that is happening. So from content generation to the decision of operating something, there will be extraordinary phenomenal productivity enhancement in the world. And we are talking about credit, and I can say this very comfortably. I am very proud that we actually use Cibil. So I am very happy to say that we not only use it, but I see the progress it is making. It is a machine that will be continuously updated and will be able to take decisions. So although the chief risk officer and commandant will remain, it will be more like a pilot in an aircraft. The machine will run on Cibil-powered autopilot, but a chief risk officer and the entire underwriting team will still exist so that the aircraft doesn't automatically take off and land on its own giving loans. But the efficacy and efficiency will become so dramatic. The word we were discussing—how will you include the new generation for financial inclusion? It will be out of it. As soon as the cost of payment lowered, it reached everywhere. As soon as processing credit, disbursing it, and collecting it becomes easy, it will go further. I mean, the cost of credit servicing will reduce, cost of capital will reduce. You can see it everywhere. So, AI in my opinion, whether we talk in the context of credit, Cibil, financial inclusion, or everyday life, productivity—I am shocked that many of us are not living the euphoria and excitement that I see in myself.

You are euphoric. You mentioned productivity many times in this conversation. Does your team fear that with productivity, what will happen to them? No, our team knows that we have a rocket in our pocket, and with that rocket we are going to another planet. In other words, it is so productive. The world will be split between those who leverage technology and those who don't. Exactly this will be the split: you leverage AI or you are not part of AI. In my opinion, most of us will, and there is no reason for it not to be. So as a company, we believe we are early in this; we can build many use cases, models, and methods that will be a benchmark for many to follow. So we are happy to be the leader of trial and error and building something, and that will give us an edge in the market. So for us, it is the differentiation: what used to be done in many years in the past could be done in one year next.

Absolutely. One of the comments here about AI, and you have the IBM C? You talk about it: most of the use cases today are around efficiency, only one or two in 10 cases are around revenue.

Switching gears, we talked about AI. You have very rich UPI data, cash flow, hardcore data. And one thing we all struggle with is the number of people who are credit active with credit cards versus debit cards. Debit cards are far more people use their accounts and UPI payments as we have now. In credit decisioning, how can we use that better? What is your view, because you can play a big role in this?

Absolutely. One of the things is that it would be good to work with yourselves and the team with the regulator to see how better we can use some of this existing India Stack data to allow that.

So, tell me something. Your tagline should be: 'We give credit to everyone.' Not the monetary credit, but credit.

So, consent-based, public is obviously the way to go. But tell me, when you look at AI, what risks do you see? Because recently, one of course is what the US government did with Claude's latest model. Second, you are saying we have to be good with AI. Understand that DPDP is there; you should not use this data. Sir, I think AI's sovereign data cloud and LLM models will be like email systems. It will happen. I can confirm that people will have air-gapped LLMs installed for banks, and that will be a solution. Right now, it is obviously hosted in the cloud. So like Hotmail and Gmail came, then Microsoft Exchange came in-house. So the solution exists, and in due course it will show up. But the question is what risk AI can have, and I do believe that the growth rate and progress of people with AI will increase the gap between haves and have-nots. So AI positive, neutral, and negative—the gap will show up, and it will be true for the country as well. So from a financial inclusion tool, it must remain a financial inclusion tool. It is an obligation, I believe, all of us should sign up for instead of trying to become even further penny-pickers of people who want to serve. While it will definitely tell that among this room, sir is the richest person, second richest, third richest, and from this border onward, I don't want to do it. It will give very sharp data. But right now, everyone's development together could be restricted by AI.

Got it. It's very interesting you say that because the credit score today tells you a score, it can be in the absolute prime category, but it doesn't tell you whether the person is good for ₹50,000 or ₹5 crore.

Exactly right. I am telling you one thing, sir, you won't believe. As a fintech business person, I have seen many credit cards to see what features each has, and I have done so many 'buy now pay later' and loan journeys that my credit score came down to around 720-730. And internally, I couldn't get a loan. And I can't tell you—I completely relied on Cibil, refreshing the code, activating, deactivating. Banks were very happy to give me another card. So it was an amazing journey for me to understand that Cibil is like an individual's benchmark of whether you are there or not. In my opinion, AI will allow—and this is what I expect Cibil to do—that people like us who are not... obviously, those who cannot pay cannot pay. Thankfully, my limits were within reach. I was paying those and so on, but the score was not reflecting that. It was saying, 'Oh, you have so many credit lines open, so many credit cards, I don't know whether you are risky or not.' That's why the score was down. But I expect that the score will be okay.

Sir, nowadays I am running at 780. 775, I was refreshing this morning. So the point I am saying is that AI will allow a continuous credit identity, an identity which is more holistic. Otherwise, it's a point-in-time identity. Over the period, it will become a continuous identity. I do believe that. I don't know if your team is building that today or will extend, but I can confirm that it will bring better credit to people and better credit as a customer to the institution. That I am very sure of.

Thank you. So switching gears a little bit, we have to talk about the regulator. If you had one ask, only one—we have many asks from the regulator—what is that one ask that you would have of the regulator to help inclusive financing in India?

Thank you. I will switch to some other questions now. I did some homework. Actually, time is written. No, I saw the time. So when you had in your early days, a dream of starting a band that sings in Sanskrit. Is that true?

And one final question because time is up and we have lunch next. You are from Aligarh. You were born in Aligarh? Yes, sir. The street food there is supposed to be brilliant. It has things like tehri, Aligarh ka kebab, barule chaat, samosa, kachori, aloo tikki, paratha. But in your interviews, you have said you are very fond of golgappas.

Aren't you hungry? Have some golgappas. Are you hungry? Have some golgappas first. You want to go somewhere? Have some golgappas. Now they even come as golgappa shots. I am a vegetarian non-drinker. So I want to say I also eat golgappa shots.

Thank you, sir. Vijay ji, thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure and privilege having you here. Thank you so much.