00:00 There is a lot of talk about how the regulator has kind of killed the fintech business by virtue of what's happened in Paytm.
00:07 Any views, any thoughts here on what happens to fintechs, what happens to Paytm, what happens to others?
00:13 So I don't think they have killed the fintechs.
00:16 What they have said is that we are regulating the bank.
00:19 We are not regulating the fintech.
00:21 So let the fintech and the bank be at arm's length distance and not make it that the bank is an extension of the fintech.
00:30 So my thinking is that Paytm will find in the next 20 days some other bank, some other, I hope, big bank to be the, play the role which their own bank was playing.
00:41 So in some sense, they may lose some business or some revenue which would go to an outsider, third party bank rather than their own.
00:50 But the fintech will continue.
00:52 First of all, the market cap of Paytm is quite small now.
00:56 They have a billion dollars cash.
00:58 By the way, we used to own 2% of Paytm before this, and now it has become 1% of 1.1%.
01:05 We are going to stay with it and we'll see over time what to do.
01:08 But I think that.
01:10 Yes, there were mistakes made, but what to do, this is life, you know, if you have 35 stocks, somebody somewhere will encounter some mishaps and they have to overcome them and we have to only say best of luck to them.
01:24 No, no, Sameer, but my overarching question was around whether you believe this whole tech, fintech story, because earlier you had a different view, then you kind of realigned.
01:32 Do you believe that's alive and kicking?
01:34 Or is there a difference there?
01:35 So my view was in the beginning, when I said that there were 50 to 100 fintechs.
01:40 True.
01:40 So actually, I said that most of them will go under, but obviously not 100% of them will go under.
01:45 And in the end, there were two or three big survivors, including Paytm and maybe PhonePe and a few others.
01:50 And others went to zero or got taken over, but basically at zero.
01:54 But at this point of time, when the price of Paytm had fallen from 2000 to some 500, we bought it first time at 520 rupees.
02:04 And now it is whatever 420, 440.
02:07 So but a lot of progress had been made.
02:10 So I don't think they're killing the fintech.
02:12 They are maybe giving a signal to the fintech that you have to still do the KYC properly and you have to do things as at least the parts that are regulated.
02:22 Obviously, they're not killing it as 40% share Paytm has and this whole digitalization has been possible because of companies like Paytm and PhonePe and others.
02:34 It can't be that you're suddenly going back.
02:36 In fact, in every meeting last week, I was telling all these US guys that, you know, Indian digitalization is ahead of US.
02:44 We can do this.
02:45 We can do that.
02:46 And I don't think anybody is planning to kill that.
02:49 It is now left to the market.
02:51 But this regulatory part had to be dealt properly, which I guess PhonePe, sorry, Paytm didn't do or their associate company or the associate bank did not do.
03:01 For that, we are all paying a price.
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