Exclusive: Ahead of UPI launch, MobiKwik Chief Business officer Vineet Singh quits

Update: MobiKwik has confirmed Vineet Singh exit to Entrackr in an email response. March was the last working month for Singh. However, it preferred to keep mum on UPI testing.

Digital payment company Mobikwik Chief Business officer Vineet Singh has resigned from the company last month. According to three sources, including a senior executive of the Gurugram-based company, Singh put in his papers during the second week of the last month and would be relieved by end of April.

Singh’s departure is a jolt to the Sequoia-funded company as it doesn’t have a strong leadership team like its peers including Paytm. Singh had joined the company in December 2016. In previous stints, he had worked with Info Edge’s portfolio companies such as Naukri, Jeevansathi, and 99acres.

Prior to MobiKwik, Singh had floated his own venture Buildzar. 

Entrackr’s sources also indicated that MobiKwik is also testing UPI-powered payment feature. “It will launch UPI-enabled payment option by the third week of this month,” says one of the sources on condition of anonymity.

MobiKwik on UPI: Why is it taking so long?

MobiKwik is one of the last wallet companies to ride UPI wave. It’s rival Paytm launched UPI-enabled payment feature in November last year. Since then, the SoftBank-backed company claims to have a substantial lead in UPI over competitors.

Since its inception, the unified payment platform has been witnessing a massive month-on-month growth. Digital payment companies, as well as global Internet behemoths including Google and WhatsApp, are also betting big on UPI to grab the largest slice of fledgling payment market.

Last month, Freecharge also integrated UPI to its app.

The quick adoption of UPI along with stringent KYC norms are eating up wallet businesses. In fact, observers opine that wallet businesses would become redundant as the reach of UPI is slated to go up in retail payment too.

While Flipkart-owned PhonePe, Paytm as well as Google Tez and WhatsApp UPI didn't take much time to get onto UPI bandwagon, MobiKwik relatively has been taking a lot of time to integrate UPI. Since earning regulatory approvals to launch UPI-enabled payment isn’t time-consuming, it’s not apparent - why MobiKwik delayed UPI integration for so long.