Exclusive: Top brass of Paytm, Paytm First and Paytm Mall quit

The exit of senior executives continues at SoftBank-backed Paytm. After the resignation of the top brass at its wealth management platform Paytm Money, its online payment business lead Puneet Jain and Paytm First’s head Siddharth Pandey have quit. 

According to three Entrackr sources, both resigned a couple of weeks ago and are currently serving their notice period. “Jain’s resignation is a significant loss for Paytm as he has been solely responsible for the payments business including wallet, payment gateway and UPI,” said one of the sources, requesting anonymity.

As per the person cited above, Jain was responsible for managing profit and loss for the payments business. He handled key roles such as sales and marketing, enterprise sales, operations among several others. 

“Jain is slated to join a large Indian public company at a senior role,” added the second source. He requested not to be named. Paytm is yet to find a replacement for Jain. “It won’t be an easy gap to fill.” 

Jain had a six-year long stint at the Noida-based firm and was one of the trusted lieutenants of Paytm’s chief Vijay Shekhar Sharma. Jain took over the payments business after Kiran Vasireddy resigned a year ago.

Siddharth Pandey who was heading Paytm First also also resigned, said the above-quoted person. He served the firm for over seven years. Paytm Mall’s Chief Financial Officer Rudra Dalmia has also moved from the company.

Entrackr had reported about Dalmia’s exit in March. However, he denied at that time. Jain, Pandey and Paytm didn’t reply to queries sent by Entrackr. We will update the post in case they respond.

While these exits seem to be on a good note, replacing Jain would be difficult for Paytm. “He led the most important function at Paytm and under his leadership, the enterprise payments business had turned profitable,” said the third source. He requested to be anonymous as well.

Separately, the resignation of Paytm Money’s CEO Pravin Jadhav in April was due to his differences with Sharma and the company over ESOPs and compensation, say sources. Soon after Jadhav’s exit, its CTO and ops head also quit the firm. Entrackr had exclusively reported about all these exits in the past.