The conversations continue here at Davos 2025, and joining us now is Vijay Sharma of Paytm. Vijay, always a pleasure. Thanks so much for joining us. You've just come off your quarter, so the numbers are out there for public consumption for everyone, and someone's already trying to call you. Is that an analyst call that you're getting on your numbers? But what does the road ahead look like in terms of what you've been able to do and what you expect now to deliver?
First of all, thank you, and congratulations. I just learned this is the 20th year of your show, and obviously 25th year yourself. I see you in person. Well, the road ahead looks like that we have committed that next quarter we will be profitable before ESOP, meaning before the ESOP cost, which is also reducing incidentally. And we should be doing that. So we are working on the business which is now path profitable onwards. After a couple of quarters, we should talk about PAT profitability, and I would go for that after a couple of quarters.
So what does a couple of quarters mean? A couple of quarters or a couple of quarters? So you won't specify?
I learned that being a public company, one thing that you should know is that you should not have one information arbitration with other information. So what we've been talking, I'll be able to detail it further just like we've said it. And we've said that from this point onward, we also talked about that because our large cash pool gives us interest income, our two costs which are CapEx sort of, and lots of other costs will get sorted out. So we should head towards PAT profitability soon.
In a few quarters is what you have to say?
So let's talk about what's happening on the UPI side of the market, Vijay. You know, despite the fact that you've got the NPCI approval, we've actually seen market share come off and come off quite sharply, a 50% drop as far as your market share is concerned, now down to 5.5%. Why is that?
It's very bad, and I can only say that the situations are public. I don't like to repeat much of that, but I'd say that is it on account of the trust issues related to what happened with not allowed to onboard at all for last? So our business was paused because of regulatory understanding and something that happened thereof. And post that has come, I'm very happy that without any marketing spend, we are adding millions of customers. So I have a super brighter side ahead, just like this bright right now. We all are surprised. And I can say that even though we've fallen market share exists, but it is easily recoverable with the product.
How do you ensure that it becomes easily recoverable? What are you going to do?
I think the customers are coming in. It's a product gap, deeper integration to UPI ecosystem, and more merchant acquisition which creates a flywheel will bring our consumer back. We do have a marketing budget, but right now we are focused on product-led growth.
Give me specifics in terms of what we should expect and what you hope your market share will be, say, in the next few quarters.
You know, from 5.5% currently, it has to go up logically. And at the same point of time, look, there is a network effect. The big continues to remain bigger, and there is a little bit if it was more number of features and services that we were able to add, we will be able to get the customers. So it is more about product features, more about integration on customers' life that'll generate the customer back. The best part I can tell you is that our brand recall, the service recall, the features, if we are able to bring them back, it'll come back.
So that's as far as trying to reclaim market share is concerned. But also, the NPCI has extended that 30% limit as far as payment is concerned for another 2 years now. Where does that leave you over Paytm?
I'm on the positive side of it, and we'll do as the market gives us opportunity to.
Do you believe that you will be given opportunities by the market because they continue to be dominated by two players, and now even the restrictions on WhatsApp have been done away with?
Yeah, new incremental customers we definitely have a lot of space and opportunity. And I do believe that India, because total number of customer base, etc., you see there is a large customer way still there. I remind of ourselves as remember that there was a time when Internet Explorer was dominating literally 80% market share because every device would get you, but now Mr. Pai's product rules the world. It's a product, and lots of other activities in it. So we'll have that kind of.
So PhonePe and Google Pay are the Internet Explorers? Who is going to be the disruptor?
I think look, if you notice, originally we had large wallet market share and actually larger UPI market share than these guys. And then different levels of regulatory actions and guidances sort of made this in a way where we have reached here with the kind of number of things that we could have done. So now that we have started to do more of those kind of things, we'll go back. The understanding is that we do not not know what it is. At the same point of time, we know what it is in a different way.
I'm sorry, I'm confused. Repeat that for me. What does this mean in simple language?
We do not not know what payments business is. We rather know what payment business is, and we'll do necessary.
