Three senior Paytm executives resign from firm
NEW DELHI: Three senior executives have resigned from Paytm in quick succession, two people aware of the matter said, adding to a series of departures of top managerial personnel at the digital payments firm in the past few years.
Abhishek Arun, chief operating officer (COO) of Paytm Payments Bank; Renu Satti, COO, offline payments; and Abhishek Gupta, senior vice-president and COO, lending, have put in their papers, the people said requesting anonymity.
Arun, who spent more than five years at Paytm, announced his exit in a LinkedIn post. He previously worked as a senior vice-president at RBL Bank.
Satti, who began her career at Paytm with a managerial role in the human resources department, has steered various businesses in the company during her 15-year stint. She also served as the chief executive officer of Paytm Payments Bank for almost a year before she was moved to the role of senior vicepresident in charge of business and, eventually, to COO-offline payments, earlier this year.
“Satti’s resignation is most surprising,” said one of the two people cited above. “However, she might be retained,” the person said. The actual reasons behind Satti’s resignation could not be ascertained, but the people cited above said there have been some arguments of late between Satti and Bhavesh Gupta, CEO, Paytm Lending.
“Even if she stays with the company, she is not going to be part of offline payments,” one of the people said.
Another executive, Abhishek Gupta, who joined Paytm last year as senior vice-president and COO-lending, has resigned and is currently serving his notice. When contacted, Gupta said, “I am still with Paytm.” Satti did not repond to a message seeking a comment.
Separately, the Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led company also
moved Abhishek Ranjan, who became Paytm Mall’s COO in June last year, to head Creditmate. In October this year, Paytm bought out Creditmate, a collections platform that helps lenders collect overdue payments from borrowers.
Paytm did not respond to Mint queries till press time.
The Noida-based company has seen several exits in the past two years. Just a few months before its initial public offering in November, Amit Nayyar, Paytm’s president, exited the company. The former Goldman Sachs executive was brought in in 2019 to build and head the company’s financial services business. At the same time, Paytm Payments Bank’s former CEO, Shinjini Kumar, joined the bank’s board. According to the company’s filings with the Registrar of Companies, Kumar joined as a director of Paytm Payments Bank.
Kumar, who runs her fintech startup Salt, joined Paytm Payments Bank in 2016 as CEO and quit a year later citing “personal reasons”, and soon after, Satti was announced as the bank’s CEO. A Paytm executive said separately that senior Paytm executives had been asked to sign agreements disallowing them to sell their shares at present. “There is a one-year lock-in for senior executives, and they are not allowed to sell their stakes,” the executive said. Interestingly, Paytm founder Sharma sold ₹402.65 crore worth of shares in an offer for sale during the public offering.