Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s Rs 4 crore pay found ‘materially below’ peer median; Board recommends revision

After an independent benchmarking exercise found that the remuneration of Paytm founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Vijay Shekhar Sharma was materially below the benchmarks for comparable companies, the board of parent One 97 Communications has proposed a revision to his pay, according to the company’s 26th Annual General Meeting (AGM) notice.

The company’s Nomination and Remuneration Committee (NRC), along with its board, had recommended the addition of a variable pay component to Sharma’s salary back in July 2025, even as he “voluntarily requested to keep his remuneration unchanged.”

Back in 2025, Sharma had also voluntarily forgone his 2.10 crore ESOPs and currently does not hold any ESOPs in the company and has not seen increase in his base compensation for the last four years. He took a total compensation of Rs 4.33 crore in remuneration in FY26, lower than the Rs 4.5 crore in FY25, including perquisites, according to the company’s annual reports.

Sharma’s proposed remuneration is at the lower end of the spectrum among his listed peers. For instance, Nykaa founder Falguni Nayar received a 28% increase in compensation and took around Rs 11 crore in FY25, while Meesho’s Vidit Aatrey’s remuneration stood at around Rs 5.42 crore for the same period.

Under the proposed structure, Sharma’s remuneration will also include a variable component which will be performance-linked , set by the NRC on achievement against predefined financial performance targets. For FY27, the metric is the percentage achievement of target PAT growth. The proposal also comes without any fresh stock options.

According to the AGM notice, Paytm appointed an “independent globally renowned third-party human-resource consulting firm” in June 2026 to benchmark Sharma’s remuneration, including fixed pay, variable pay and ESOPs. It also compared Sharma’s remuneration with other founders and CEOs of new-age internet companies across the Nifty Internet Index; select financial services and technology companies in BSE 100 and the broader BSE 100 group.

The Paytm board has also proposed a revamp of the remuneration structure for non-executive and independent directors based on an independent benchmarking exercise, alongside changes to the ESOP framework that would tie future vesting more closely to performance.

The move follows Paytm’s achievement of its first full year of profitability in FY26, with profit after tax (PAT) o f Rs 552 crore, and the company is expected to sustain this trajectory in FY27. The mobile payments company saw its PAT rise 79% year-on-year and 20% sequentially in Q1 FY27 to Rs 220 crore. The revised framework, subject to shareholder approval, will apply from April 1, 2026 to December 18, 2027, covering the remaining period of Sharma’s tenure as Managing Director and CEO.