Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is the youngest Indian to join the Forbes billionaire list.
Sharma, 39, is the only Indian billionaire under the age of 40. He is ranked 1,394th on the list with a fortune of $1.7 billion.
Son of a schoolteacher from a small city in north India, Sharma founded fast-rising mobile wallet Paytm in 2011. Paytm has notched up 250 million registered users and 7 million transactions daily, according to Forbes.
Sharma owns 16 percent of Paytm, which is now valued at $9.4 billion. He has also created Paytm Mall, an e-commerce business business and the Paytm Payments Bank.
Sharma, who couldn't sit for the IIT entrance owing to his poor english proficiency, loved browsing the internet and dreamt about being in Silicon Valley, the mecca for worldwide innovation.
He built his first company- 'XS Communications', a college-based startup that created Content Management Systems.
While trying to set up One97 Communications, the parent company of Paytm, Sharma took a loan of Rs 8 lakhs, which got him into a vicious cycle of unpayable debt. This forced him to take up petty jobs to make ends meet, setting up LAN connections, delivering guest lectures and others.
With a few initial hiccups, Sharma founded Paytm in 2011.
Globally, the 63 youngest billionaires in the world are worth a collective $265 billion, up from $208 billion last year.
