"We want to remove middlemen from the ecosystem. Often small merchants, constrained to resort to middlemen to sell goods, end up losing money to them," Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and CEO of One97 Communications, the parent company of Paytm, told FE. The company will also grow its 2,100-strong workforce over three times in the next 12 months to support its growth plans. Last month, Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial Services, which runs the Alipay wallet, invested $575 million in Paytm against a 25% stake. One97Communications was valued at over $2 billion, putting it in the same league as e-commerce players like Flipkart and Snapdeal. Sharma and SAIF Partners, which has so far invested about $70 million in the company, continue to remain majority shareholders. Paytm claims to have around 15,000 merchants and about 25 million registered users. Besides, it has about 20 million mobile wallet users.