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A lengthy conversation on India, technology philosophy without a single sheet of paper, document or a power point presentation helped clinch the most important deal of Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma's career.
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway picked up a minority stake in Paytm this week, making it the first direct investment for the legendary investor in India, in a move that is not just significant for the Noida-based payments to e-commerce player but one of the biggest endorsements for Indi a's nascent startup ecosystem.
Berkshire has traditionally been very selective in the tech space, with Buffett stating recently that he was wrong for not having invested in companies such as Google and Amazon.
Recent reports said plans to invest in Uber fell through.
While Buffett has sold its holdings in IBM, its held on to Apple.
"I give credit to our board member Mark Schwartz, who has been of immense help for me and the board.
He introduced us to Todd Combs, the investment manager at Berkshire.
Ravi (Ravi Adusumalli of SAIF, an early investor in Paytm) and I went and met them.
We had a lengthy conversation without paper, documents or presentation on India, technology, Paytm, rivals, philosophies of life.
It was a great chat that was followed by a couple of calls, where more questions came up," Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma recounted in an interview to ET NOW on Tuesday.
While Berkshire and Paytm confirmed the deal, they did not disclose the terms of the transaction.
Reports say this could be a minority stake of 3-4% in One97 Communications, the parent company of Paytm , at a valuation of $10-12 Billion.
The other significant investors in Paytm include Alibaba, Ant Financial, SoftBank Vision Fund, SAIF Partners Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who owns less than 20%.
Berkshire said in a statement late Monday that Warren Buffett was not involved in the transaction.
When asked if Buffett featured in any of the conversations, Sharma said, "I haven't met him in person yet.
I understand that Masayoshi Son and Warren Buffett met at the Sun Valley conference, where Buffett told Masa about the Paytm investment.
Its more probable now than before that I will see him and have a selfie with him."
Paytm in the last few years has leveraged its digital payments platform to build a host of services at the intersection of payments, technology and consumers.
This includes mobile payments through wallets and UPI, payments bank, insurance, mutual funds, e-commerce, movie tickets and air tickets, making it a digital conglomerate at scale.
"I don't know Berkshire's selection criteria officially but this deal is an acknowledgement of scale of customers we are serving, how we are building a large financial services company led by payments as a moat.
Biggest commitment from the Berkshire side is Todd Combs coming on our board," Sharma said.
