Exclusive: Senior-level exits continue at Paytm, two more VPs resign

Paytm has been finding it tough to keep its leadership team intact. One after another, the company is losing many key employees. After Deepak Abbot, Nitin Misra and Ankit Gera, two Vice Presidents (VP) Sujit Mishra and Nitin Sagar have resigned from the Noida-headquartered company. 

“Mishra and Sagar had resigned last month and currently serving the notice period,” said three sources aware with their resignation. Mishra has been managing ‘recharge’ product and cloud vertical while Sagar was heading both online and offline payments product.

Last month, two Senior Vice Presidents - Abbot, who was managing several products and Nitin Misra, head at consumer lending vertical - had resigned from Paytm. 

Resignation of top-level employees at Paytm started in May this year with the departures of Paytm Chief Operating Officer (COO) Kiran Vasireddy and Paytm Mall’s COO Amit Sinha. The duo departed because of losing the plot in the commerce business and tepid growth in the payments business, respectively.

Sources emphasised that maturity of ESOPs and high-pressure situation have been the primary factors for exodus at the top level. “More product heads and senior employees are likely to resign as they have been asked to chase unrealistic growth,” they added.

Sources requested anonymity as revelations can harm their interest with the company. Misra and Sagar have confirmed their resignation to Entrackr while Paytm declined to offer comment for the story.

Of late, Paytm has been facing intense competition in the payments business from PhonePe and Google Pay. As a result, senior employees are under pressure to meet lofty targets.

While Paytm has been losing its top-level employees, it’s also hiring fresh people at senior functions. Amit Nayyar had joined the company as a president while Ankit Sinha left Google Cloud to drive Paytm’s cloud vertical. The Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led company also brought Trivago’s former India Head Abhinav Kumar to lead marketing for the company.

Paytm also elevated its former CFO Madhur Deora to the president role and Vikas Garg to the position of deputy chief financial officer. Moving out of many top-level employees in the period of a few months is not a good sign for the SoftBank-backed firm, especially when it’s in the market to raise fresh funds.

According to an ET report, the company had shelved the plan to raise $2 billion. Instead, it’s raising $1 billion from existing backers - SoftBank and Alibaba along with US-based T Rowe Price. 

What do you think of exits of many senior functions at Paytm? Is it normal or concerning?