Movers and Shakers Of The Week [2 -7 Mar]

We bring to you the latest edition of movers and shakers of the week in the Indian startup ecosystem.

This week, Citrus Pay founder Amrish Rau has now joined point of sale service provider Pine Labs as its chief executive officer.

Rau is replacing Vicky Bindra who was heading Pine Labs since May 2018. Bindra, after a two-year successful stint as CEO, is moving back to San Francisco. Bindra will continue to be an advisor to the company supporting strategic initiatives.

For his new role, Rau brings in his experience in the fintech domain as well as in leadership roles at Citrus Pay and PayU. With more than 2 decades of experience in the information technology, finance and fintech areas, Rau had founded Citrus Pay, which was acquired by Naspers’ PayU in 2016.

Rau had stepped down as PayU India CEO in February 2019 and went on to oversee a broader role within the company, focussing on fintech partnerships and investments for the payments major.

“Pine Labs is an amazing platform which converges everything from everyday payments, to credit and gift cards. Deep domain knowledge and innovative products designs have helped Pine Labs lead the market. Using cloud technologies, Pine Labs wants to be all things commerce for merchants, help them save time and operate businesses efficiently. I feel excited to be part of the journey,” said Rau.

Here’s a look at the other important movers and shakers of the week

IndiaLends Strengthens Leadership Team

Fintech platform IndiaLends has appointed Amit Kumar Singh as chief business officer and Animesh Bhartiya as VP of brand and marketing.

Singh, a former senior executive of Airtel Payments Bank, will now be responsible for leading growth and driving new initiatives as CBO of IndiaLends.

He has an experience of over 15 years of leading business, creating & executing strategy, managing large operations. Prior to joining IndiaLends, Singh led the sales distribution & GTM strategy at Airtel Payments Bank. Singh has previously worked at Reliance Jio money, FINO Payments Bank and YTS solutions. He is an alumnus of IMT, Ghaziabad and holds a bachelor degree from NIT, Trichy.

Bhartiya, who was earlier heading communications at Godrej & Boyce, will now head the brand at his new role.

He joins IndiaLends with over is 20 years of experience in developing brand and marketing strategy, marketing communications and experience design. Prior to joining IndiaLends, Bhartiya was the chief communications officer for Godrej and Boyce. He has also spent a considerable amount of time in UK in marketing agencies like Ogilvy & Mather, Publicis etc.

IndiaLends was founded in March 2015 by Gaurav Chopra and Mayank Kachhwaha. It is a credit scoring and analytics platform.

Housejoy Appoints Arpan Biswas

Home management startup Housejoy has announced the appointment of Arpan Biswas as vice president of marketing. In this role, he will be responsible for all marketing and project execution related activities and will aim to steer the business towards growth. Before this, he was the chief marketing officer at Wonderchef Home Appliances.

Some of his key responsibilities at Housejoy will include developing and implementing a cohesive marketing plan to increase brand awareness, setting current and long-term goals for internal teams, designing and reviewing the marketing budget, scalable project operations, and client and stakeholder management amongst others.

Housejoy offers services such as home construction, renovation, interior design and home maintenance services such as home cleaning, repairs, painting, and appliance installation.

Uber Promotes Vidhya Duthaluru

Uber has promoted Vidhya Duthaluru as the global engineering head for the customer care platform. Based out of Bengaluru, Duthaluru will lead teams in Uber’s bay area and Bengaluru tech centres to improve customer support experiences and feedback mechanisms for millions of users worldwide, including riders, drivers, eaters, delivery persons, and restaurants.

Duthaluru joined Uber’s Bengaluru tech centre in August 2018 and helped the company to set up a team to build the customer care platform technology known as the customer obsession team within Uber.

US-based Uber is an online ride-hailing platform which is operating in many countries across the world.

Knowlarity Strengthens Leadership Team

Singapore-based Knowlarity has appointed Jaideep Kumar, Sumit Punchhi and Puru Govind as chief sales officer, chief marketing officer and chief product officer respectively.

Kumar has over 20 years of experience in business development and sales having worked in the cloud and SaaS space with market players like Salesforce, AWS, Microsoft and Red Hat. He had founded SaaSfocus in the SaaS Consulting space.

Punchhi has over 20 years of experience, out of which 15 years of dynamic experience, handling roles like strategy, marketing, and sales and operations.

His knowledge and experience working with some of the leading telecom companies, including Tata Teleservices, Vodafone, Bharti Airtel, will play a key role in shaping Knowlarity’s strategy.

Govind has over fourteen years of experience. Before Knowlarity, he was the group CTO/CEO-India at B2X Care Solutions and worked for almost a decade at SAP in Germany.

His knowledge of product management and technology will help Knowlarity create innovative products for globally competitive organisations.

Knowlarity offers cloud telephony services. The company provides cloud-based customer service and sales call handling solutions to businesses.

Facebook India Announces New Communications Head

Facebook India has appointed Bipasha Chakrabarti to take on the role of communications director. She will be a part of the India leadership team and will be reporting to Facebook India’s VP and managing director Ajit Mohan. As part of her new role, she will lead the communications charter for both Facebook and Instagram in India.

Chakrabarti comes with eighteen years of experience working with tech brands and PR agencies. In her last assignment as the head of corporate communications at Cisco India and SAARC, she led the entire gamut of communications, including analyst, technology, and corporate communications and also managed leadership and executive communications for the office of APJC President.

Facebook is a US-based social media platform company which was founded by Mark Zuckerberg.

Sami Labs Appoints Neeraja Shetty

Sami-Sabinsa Group has appointed Neeraja Shetty as the chief executive officer of Sami Labs, a part of Sami-Sabinsa Group. As the CEO, Shetty will oversee and drive key functions of strategy, operations, supply chain, finance and new projects to help achieve the ambitious growth plans of the company.

During her previous assignments with Sami Labs, Shetty held the positions of CEO – of formulations between 2002 to 2008 and was the director and president of strategy and business development from 2011 to 2017.

Sami-Sabinsa Group is a producer of nutraceuticals, cosmeceuticals, standardized herbal extracts, fine chemicals, speciality chemicals, and probiotics.

Stay tuned for the next edition of Movers and Shakers of the week!