Vijay Shekhar Sharma, MD, One97 Communications On Starting Up

By Shrija Agrawal

  • 30 Aug 2011

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and managing director of One97 Communications, can be called an early starter. A child prodigy, he passed class XII at the age of 14 and started his first business venture while doing his third year at engineering college. His company, Xs! Corporations, was later sold to Lotus Interworks in 1999. After working for Lotus for a year, he founded One97, which provides a platform for delivering mobile value-added services, in December 2000. Sharma, however, likes to position One97 as a mobile internet company that is sitting on Rs 100 crore of cash and is looking to raise around Rs 100 crore more via private equity after dropping plans for an Indian public listing. In an exclusive video interview with VCCircle, he talks about the entrepreneurial journey, the highs and lows of starting up, valuations in the e-commerce space. Watch the wide-ranging conversation in the video below: