Exclusive: After Deepak Abbot, another Senior VP Nitin Misra quits Paytm

Amidst efforts to beef up its leadership team with new hires, the resignation of top-level employees at Paytm continues. After Deepak Abbot, another Senior Vice President Nitin Misra has resigned from the SoftBank-backed company.

According to three Entrackr sources, Misra had submitted his resignation earlier this month, and October will be his last working month. “Maturity of ESOPs and high-pressure situation have been the primary factors for resignation,” said sources on condition of anonymity.

Misra has an over 52 months-long stint at Paytm. He has been heading the consumer lending vertical for the company and helped to build new products including Paytm Postpaid from scratch.

This is the fourth crucial exit from the Noida-based Decacorn in the past six months. Amit Sinha, Kiran Vasireddy and Deepak Abbot had already moved on from the company. While reasons for Abbot's departure are still unknown, Sinha and Vaisireddy left because of losing momentum in commerce and payments units.

Last week, Entrackr had exclusively reported about Abbot’s resignation.

Sources emphasised that Paytm has been facing intense competition in the payments business. As a result, senior employees are under pressure to meet targets. “Generally, employees at senior leadership roles move on after the completion of stocks’ lock-in period. Hence, Misra’s exit is quite natural,” they added.

Besides Misra, Amit Veer, Chief Business Officer & SVP- Wholesale & Offline Payments may resign, as per sources. However, Entrackr couldn’t verify this independently.

Responding to Entrackr queries, Misra has claimed he’s very much with Paytm while Paytm’s spokesperson said, “We would like to inform that Nitin Misra and Amit Veer have not resigned and are still part of the Paytm team. Any information regarding their departure from the company is untrue and mere speculations.”

While Paytm has been losing its long-serving employees at the top level, it also elevated its former CFO Madhur Deora to the president role and Vikas Garg to the position of deputy chief financial officer.

Amit Nayyar, who recently appointed as president of the company will look after Misra’s work, reveal sources. Nayyar has worked with Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Arpwood Capital. Ankit Sinha joined Paytm to lead cloud and AI verticals. Paytm also brought Trivago’s former India Head Abhinav Kumar on board last week to fill Abbot’s role.