Three senior executives have resigned from BharatPe, two people aware of the matter told Mint. Vijay Aggarwal, chief technology officer; Nehul Malhotra, head, PostPe and Rajat Jain, chief product officer for lending and consumer products, have tendered their resignations.
Aggarwal, who has been with BharatPe since March 2020, has quit “to start his own venture," the people quoted above said. Former Paytm executives Jain and Malhotra are "also moving out to pursue their own entrepreneurial journey," the persons added.
Some two to three exits have also happened at the mid-managerial level, including those of Geetanshu Singla, VP-technology, and Manas Poddar, who was programme manager at BharatPe.
“We confirm that Vijay, Rajat, Nehul and Geetanshu are moving on from BharatPe to pursue their entrepreneurial passions. They will continue to ensure smooth transition of their role to the designated leaders. While it is difficult to part ways with these fantastic leaders, we are also proud of them for having taken the entrepreneurial plunge. We wish them all the best and would continue to cheer for them as they build their next ventures. BharatPe has an incredible leadership bench, and has continued to strengthen and build it over the last 12 months, with key senior hires in product, technology, data science, finance and HR," a BharatPe spokesperson said responding to Mint's query on this.
Since the beginning of 2022, BharatPe has been mired in controversies and seen quite a few top-level exits. First it was Ashneer Grover, who was ousted over allegations of financial irregularities.
In June, the company’s chief revenue officer Nishit Sharma left. The same month, BharatPe’s founding member Satyam Nathani, who was one of the most important members of the tech team, also resigned to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions.
The biggest setback was the exit of Bhavik Koladiya. He ran the tech and product of the fintech giant and ended his association with the company in the last week of June. Koladiya, who is just a high-school graduate, had been running BharatPe’s tech from the start. He led a 60-member tech and product team. Apart from managing BharatPe’s tech, an agreement was put in place where Koladiya would have offered tech consulting to the Unity Small Finance Bank – a joint venture between Centrum and BharatPe.
Over last few months, most exits have been from BharatPe’s tech and product team, and as such would likely have an impact on the Unity Bank venture which is dependent on BharatPe for its technology expertise.
In fact, Koladiya, Nathani and Vijay Aggarwal were set to play an important role in Unity SFB, for which BharatPe is expected to contribute as a technology service provider.
These exits come at a time when the fintech company is transitioning itself into a professionally-run entity. BharatPe, which is currently focused on achieving profitability, is also preparing for an IPO in 18-24 months.
BharatPe was started in July 2017 and was incorporated in March 2018 by Koladiya and Shashvat Nakrani, who was then studying at IIT-Delhi, as co-founders with each owning 50% stake. Three months later in June 2018, Grover joined as the third co-founder. In August 2021, the company entered the unicorn club after raising $370 million led by Tiger Global. Former SBI chairman Rajnish Kumar was appointed as chairman at BharatPe in October 2021.