Paytm goes for internal restructuring, plans to hire more seniors

Paytm, run by One97 Communications, has over the past few weeks hired several senior leaders, including from Google and Goldman Sachs as it goes for the next stage of expansion.

Focusing on monetisation opportunities, Paytm is building advertising and cloud offerings for Indian businesses, and is planning to bring in more senior hires to expand these verticals over the next few months.

Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma (pictured) said the focus was more on providing financial services not only via its payments bank but also through lending, insurance, and wealth management. 

“We will be adding more revenue line items that require vertical experts. That is why we are adding more of them. The theme that we are augmenting now is led by financial services. So what we are doing is we are creating president structures. These roles are now clearly defined,” he said.

Paytm has seen a series of exits, including Paytm Mall Chief Operating Officer (COO) Amit Sinha, Paytm COO Kiran Vasireddy, Senior Vice-President Deepak Abbot, Vice-President Ankit Gera, Vice-President Sujeet Misra, and Senior Vice President Nitin Misra, amongst others.  

The leaders joining across different verticals will contribute towards the company's plans to launch a host of products in financial services over the next 12 months to 18 months.

Also, the company has been promoting some of its senior leadership to larger roles. It recently elevated its Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Madhur Deora as president and promoted Vikas Garg, who was working as senior vice-president (finance) to the position of deputy CFO. 
 

It has appointed two ex-Google executives - Praveen Sharma and Ankit Sinha - to head its advertising business and cloud offering, respectively. While Praveen Sharma has been appointed as senior vice-president (ad business), Sinha has joined as vice-president of Paytm AI Cloud.

Ex-Goldman Sachs Executive Amit Nayyar has been appointed the president. He would be responsible for further strengthen Paytm's footprint in lending, insurance, wealth management, and broking businesses

The Paytm founder said the focus was on financial services as the company has emerged the top player in online as well as offline payments. "So we have seen consolidation where offline and online payments are key drivers. Our online payments gateway business is market leader by a significant margin over the number two player. Our offline payments is anyway way ahead of competition, so now attention is now on getting financial service expertise," he said.

In this financial year, he said, Paytm had seen its cost being reduced by almost 10 per cent and growth increasing 25 per cent quarter on quarter. "We have learnt that the network effect has kicked in and that has given birth to a business model where will build more revenue line items. This is the business model where customer has bank and payments as foundation then consumer internet, financial service, and cloud," he said. The company claims to have grown over 20x in the past three years.