Digital payments platform MobiKwik is beefing up its leadership team with a series of hires ahead of ramping up its offline play.
In a statement, the company said it has hired Rahul Lodha, co-founder of home design and building platform Renomania, as vice president of technology. Lodha has over 13 years of experience in the consumer Internet, startups and telecommunications space.
Apurva Anand, former national sales manager at Paper Boat's parent firm Hector Beverages, has joined MobiKwik as national sales lead for offline retail.
The payments platform has also hired former Flipkart deputy general counsel Lokesh Rajpal as its chief general counsel. Rajpal comes with a background in litigation, commercial contracts, regulatory compliance, secretarial and corporate law, and has worked with companies like Honeywell, eBay, Noon.com and Metro in the past.
As many as seven other senior-level positions, including CFO and business head - lending are likely to be filled up soon, the statement added.
“We have grown phenomenally in the past few months and are preparing to serve more than 260 million users,†said Bipin Preet Singh, co-founder of MobiKwik.
These hirings come close on the heels of former Jabong vice president Rukaiya Rangwala joining the company in October as head of its payments gateway business.
The company also said it was expanding its payment gateway team to 100 across Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata and Bangalore offices by the end of the current fiscal.
One MobiKwik Systems Pvt. Ltd, which runs MobiKwik, entered into an agreement with non-banking financial company Bajaj Finance Ltd in August to sell a 10.83% stake for about Rs 225 crore ($35.4 million).
The mobile wallet firm had been in talks with existing as well as new investors to raise about $100 million at a valuation of $1 billion (Rs 6,400 crore). But the deal with Bajaj Finance valued MobiKwik around Rs 2,077 crore ($327 million).
