Paytm founder may permanently shift his base to Bengaluru. Know why!

Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is planning to visit Bengaluru for a month. However, if all goes well, then Sharma might make Bengaluru his home.

As per an Economic Times report, Sharma said, "Bengaluru is to tech what Mumbai is for Bollywood — you must be there to create name in the film industry. It's (Bengaluru is) the melting pot of all the top tech talent, they all come here like wannabe actors go to Mumbai for showcasing their talent."

Founder of Paytm, an Alibaba backed firm, Sharma primarily has two reasons for shifting his base to Bengaluru—one Paytm is struggling to find great engineers in Delhi, and two, Sharma wants his two and a half year old son to grow in a more ‘middle class, grounded’ environment.

"I personally identify with the city's grounded, middle class culture where people like Nandan (Niekani) and Azim Premji are the change agents," he said.
In Bengaluru, Sharma will be joining several other tech entrepreneurs including Quikr founder Pranay Chulet.

Explaining the company’s need of new engineers Sharma said, "We have around 700 engineers in Delhi, and we need couple of hundred more—but the "alpha engineers" we want are not found in Delhi," said Sharma.

Paytm is realising that the technology battlefront is where it needs to maximise its efforts. Sharma, whose firm recently acquired a banking license from the RBI, said quality of ideas in Bengaluru are far superior too.

"I was in a hall recently where Nandan asked the audience if incumbent banks could be disrupted by newer startups, and everybody raised their hands. This is the place where people believe they can change things, disrupt," he said. It was Wipro founder Premji who suggested that Sharma move to Bengaluru at a dinner meet recently. Nilekani backed the idea.
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