Continuing with an obvious hiring spree of Senior level execs for its up coming Payments bank, Paytm has today appointed two executives from Citi Bank as heads of product development and banking solutions.
PayTM has announced the appointment of Ruchita Taneja Aggarwal and Priya Karnik as head of banking solutions and head of product development, respectively.
At Citi Bank, Ruchita was director of treasury and trade solutions and Singapore head for regional product sales while Priya was director of treasury and trade solutions, regional implementation.
Commenting about the appointment, Priya Karnik said:
It is no secret Paytm is expanding and diversifying at an exponential rate. Joining the organisation gives me an unparalleled opportunity to work with some of the most well-known industry thought leaders who are trying to build something new and unique.
Amit Sinha, vice president at Paytm said,
We are committed to keep enhancing our services and product portfolio. We are confident that with (Aggarwal and Karnik) on board, we will be able to drive greater growth and success.
With these appointments, Alibaba-backed Paytm’s payment arm business has a leadership team across all major sectors, including FMCG, consultancy, banking and e-commerce ahead of official launch of the service.
The company is also looking to further expand its payment bank team to around 1500 people over the next 12 months. Recently, it has also recruited seven senior executives to strengthen top management of the payment bank.
Paytm first appointed Shinjini Kumar as the CEO of its payment bank business in February, followed by Vikas Purohit from Amazon, Kshitij Sanghi from McKinsey, Varun Khullar from ITC and Vipin Surelia from RBI – all in the role of Vice President for various verticals.
These executives are expected to lay out a strategy for payments bank. One97 Communications, the parent behind the upcoming bank, is also expected to reveal a blue print of the bank. At present the core team of Paytm payments bank consists of 40 members. However, the company is going to expand its team to around 1500 to 2500 members soon.
PayTm was supposed to start the bank business in April 2016 but it got delayed, with the new business is expected to become operational in August 2016.
A couple of weeks ago, Paytm joined hands with IT giant Wipro to create the requisite technology infrastructure for its upcoming Payments Bank business. Wipro will be implementing the core banking solution and will also programme and manage integration of other key systems like the anti-money laundering solution and the regulatory reporting solution.
PayTm was among the 11 companies who got a license to open a payments bank by RBI in August last year. It has plans to invest Rs 1,200 crore in the payments bank during the first three years. It will set up nearly 20 signature branches; 200 smaller store-like branches; and at least 1,000 agents for the bank.
