One 97 Communications Ltd, which operates Paytm, has appointed Kiran Vasireddy as the chief operating officer of its payments business.
Vasireddy will be overseeing all product and business functions of the payments division in line with Paytm’s growth plans of bringing 500 million Indians into the mainstream economy, a company statement said.
Vasireddy has been associated with Paytm for nearly a decade and has held several key roles. He has also played an important part in leading the firm’s payments solution business, including the company’s offline payment and QR code solutions across organised retailers, parking lots, hospitals, tolls, petrol pumps, corporate food courts, and neighbourhood offline stores.
“This year, we are aiming for 10 million merchants on our platform, which puts us on the right path to build one of the largest payments networks in the world,†said Vasireddy.
Paytm had recently demerged its e-commerce business into a separate entity called Paytm E-Commerce Pvt. Ltd, which runs Paytm Mall. Subsequently, it had appointed Amit Sinha as the chief operating officer of Paytm Mall.
It had also inducted SAIF Partner’s Ravi Adusumalli and four top executives from Alibaba as its board of directors in April.
The online marketplace started with the same shareholding as One97 and had raised $200 million from China’s Alibaba Group Holding and venture capital firm SAIF Partners. In February, Paytm had launched a separate app and website for Paytm Mall.
The company had launched its payments bank on May 23 and its long-time executive and vice-president Renu Satti was appointed as the chief executive of the vertical.
Last October, the mobile-wallet company had appointed former Citigroup executive Madhur Deora as it chief financial officer and senior vice-president.
In August 2016, One97 Communications was valued at $4.8 billion when it had raised $60 million from Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek Inc’s Mountain Capital fund.