Elevation Capital COO Vivek Mathur Resigns From Paytm Board

Vivek Kumar Mathur, COO at Elevation Capital has resigned from the board of directors of the listed fintech giant Paytm effective June 30, regulatory filings showed.

Mathur served as an alternate director to Ravi Chandra Adusumalli, founder and co-managing partner at Elevation Capital and a non-executive, non-independent director at Paytm.

In the filings, Paytm said Mathur had tendered his resignation as there was no need for an alternate director to Adusumalli. “Please note that Mr Ravi Chandra Adusumalli, non-executive non-independent director of the company continues on the board of the company,” added Paytm.

Elevation Capital had invested in the listed fintech giant during its Series A funding round. The early stage VC firm is also an early backer in the likes of Capital Float, Chaayos, CityMall, Cleartax, FarEye, FrontRow, IndiaMART, ixigo, Meesho and Polygon, among others.

Vivek Mathur, who also served as a managing director at Saif Partners, has been on the investment team at Elevation for several big-name Indian startups, including Acko, FirstCry, Paytm, Tracxn and Xpressbees. Saif Partners was rebranded as Elevation Capital in the year 2020.

Paytm’s shares closed at INR 865.10 apiece on Friday (June 30). The fintech’s shares have been rallying recently; in the past six months, Paytm shares have gone up by more than 62%, having hit a 52-week high of INR 914.95 recently.

The reshuffle in Paytm’s board comes as Macquarie downgraded Paytm to a ‘neutral’ rating from ‘outperform’, citing competitive and regulatory risks. The brokerage said the stock’s outperformance period is over and it believes that Paytm’s lending business volume can be volatile in the long run.

“Though Paytm does not carry any balance sheet risk on the loans originated, we think it carries significant business and reputation risk,” the brokerage firm said.

The fintech giant also faces stiff competition in India’s digital payments market on all fronts from the likes of Google Pay and PhonePe, as the triumvirate continues to dominate the Indian UPI payments market.

Per the latest figures from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the big three payment apps accounted for a 96.83% market share in terms of transaction count and 95.35% in terms of transaction value in May 2023.

However, Paytm settled for bronze as the third-largest UPI app, processing 134.22 Cr transactions worth INR 1.64 Lakh Cr during the month. The listed fintech accounted for 14.26% and 11.06% market share in terms of transaction count and value, respectively.