Founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma has become the largest shareholder of India's biggest fintech, Paytm. With Antfin‘s shareholding reducing to 9.90 per cent in One97 Communications Limited (OCL) the parent company of Paytm, its Founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma has become the sole Significant Beneficial Owner (SBO). With this, Ant is no longer an SBO in the mobile payments pioneer.  

The company, on Sunday, notified the stock exchanges of a ‘change in significant beneficial ownership’ pursuant to Rule 3 (2) of the Companies (Significant Beneficial Owners) Amendment Rules, 2019. The total share capital of Sharma in OCL, both direct and indirect, is 19.42 per cent making him the sole SBO of the company. However, Paytm remains a professionally managed company with no identified promoter. As per Indian laws, for anyone to be identified as a promoter, the shareholding has to be above 25 per cent. 

Antfin’s total shareholding in Paytm has significantly reduced from 23.79 per cent in the last few weeks after it sold a 10.3 per cent stake to Resilient Asset Management B.V., an overseas entity 100 per cent owned by Sharma. This was followed by the sale of another 3.6 per cent in block deals.  

Analysts believe that Sharma becoming the SBO, will remove the Chinese overhang from Paytm’s stock. An earlier report by BofA Securities said that buying this stake Sharma “indicates his confidence in the story with a ‘skin in the game’s approach show”. It added that this reduces the risk of some other strategic investor coming who would have a major stake like Sharma’s.  

The global brokerage firm further said, “We believe a Chinese shareholder (Antfin) ceasing to be the largest shareholder, would also directionally be positive for the company fundamentals.” Analysts believe that this will also be a positive for Paytm in terms of regulatory matters.