Top Deck Reshuffle At Paytm: Rakesh Singh Replaces Varun Sridhar As Paytm Money CEO

In another top deck reshuffle at Paytm, the Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led startup’s wealthtech arm Paytm Money’s CEO Varun Sridhar has stepped down and switched to a different role within the company.

A report by ET said that Paytm has roped in Rakesh Singh, who was earlier the CEO of the broking arm of wealthtech startup Fisdom, as the new CEO of Paytm Money. 

While Paytm didn’t respond to Inc42’s queries on the development till the time of publishing this story, sources within Fisdom confirmed that Singh has left the startup. 

Singh, who joined Fisdom in 2018, brings in over two decades of experience of working in the banking and fintech space. Earlier, he worked with ICICI bank, HDFC Securities, Standard Chartered Bank, and SVC Bank, as per his LinkedIn profile. 

On the other hand, Sridhar was heading the wealthtech arm for Paytm since July 2020. Before joining the fintech major, he served as the CEO of Oppo-owned FinShell India for over a year. He also worked with Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Value Partners, and BNP Paribas in his over two-decade long career. 

Under his leadership, Paytm Money managed to turn profitable as well. The trading platform reported a net profit of INR 42.8 Cr in FY23 as against a loss of INR 10.7 Cr in the previous fiscal. 

Launched in 2018, Paytm Money is a SEBI-registered investment adviser, offering investment execution and advisory services. It competes with Zerodha, Groww, and recently-launched PhonePe’s Share.Market, among others.

The development comes at a time when regulatory curbs on Paytm Payments Bank (PPBL) have rocked the overall business of Paytm. Earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) data showed that fund transfer transactions in PPBL’s prepaid payment instruments declined 64% to 7.4 Mn in March from 20.7 Mn in December 2023. 

It is also pertinent to note that Paytm has seen a number of top-level exits over the last few months, including those of parent One 97 Communications’ chief marketing officer Sumit Mathur, One 97 Communications’ senior vice president of business Praveen Sharma, and Paytm Payments Bank MD and CEO Surinder Chawla.

Shares of Paytm ended Thursday’s trading session 0.20% lower at INR 371.60 on the BSE.

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