Exclusive: Paytm’s SVP Deepak Abbot quits; Trivago posterboy likely replacement

In a bid to ramp up its team at the top, Paytm has been elevating several existing senior employees to leadership roles as well as hiring new ones. Of late, it promoted Vikas Garg to the position of deputy chief financial officer (CFO) while CFO Madhur Deora elevated to president role. 

Amit Nayyar joined as president to drive financial services business. Ankit Sinha had left Google Cloud to look after Paytm’s cloud and AI verticals. 

Nevertheless, there has been a churn at the top level as well at the Alibaba and SoftBank-backed firm. After Amit Sinha (Paytm Mall head) and Kiran Vasireddy (Paytm’s COO), another Senior Vice President Deepak Abbot is moving out of Paytm.

According to three Entrackr sources, Abbot has resigned early this month. “He resigned recently and currently serving a notice period that could last two months,” added sources including a couple of company’s insider on condition of anonymity. 

While Sinha resigned as Paytm Mall lost number three spot in the Indian e-commerce market, Vasireddy’s exit was likely to be related for losing momentum in the payments business. Since 2018, PhonePe and Google Pay have been eating up Paytm’s market share in the fledgeling UPI ecosystem. 

Snapdeal did the same to Paytm Mall after a year and a half of its pivot, to reclaim the spot of India's third-largest e-commerce company.

Entrackr couldn't ascertain the reason of Abbot's resignation. However, he has been one of the key lieutenants for One97 Communications’ chief Vijay Shekhar Sharma. He has been managing product, growth, analytics, optimisation among others at Paytm for about the past 35 months.

Before joining Paytm, Abbot was the Chief Operating Officer of calls & data usage tracking app Getsmartapp. Sources also indicate that Abbot hasn’t decided his next gig. Meanwhile, sources also assert that Trivago’s former India Head Abhinav Kumar has joined last week to fill Abbot’s role.

Kumar had a six years stint at Trivago. Besides heading the company till February 2019, he was a lead character in the company’s popular advertisement.

Queries sent to Abbot didn’t elicit any responses until the publication of this post. We will update the post as and when he responds.

Update: Responding to Entrackr queries on Abbot's resignation and joining of Kumar, Paytm spokesperson said, “We are excited to have Abhinav on-board who is known for his expertise in product marketing. We are in the next phase of our growth, and his skills and expertise will be instrumental to our efforts of expanding digital payments in our country."