Exclusive: Eyeing IPO, Paytm restructures its top deck

Paytm appears to have begun restructuring at the top level. Madhur Deora and Amit Nayyar have been elevated to higher roles, said three people aware of the ongoing process. According to the sources, these changes are early steps towards laying the structure for a potential public listing.

“Deora has been appointed as Paytm group’s Chief Financial Officer or CFO while Nayyar got an additional responsibility of merger and acquisition,” said one of the people cited above on condition of anonymity. Under his new role, Deora now controls finance of Paytm Money, Paytm First Games, Paytm Mall and Paytm Insider.”

In his previous role, Deora was president at the Noida-headquartered decacorn. He also served Paytm as its chief financial officer and senior vice president for four years.

Nayyar, on the other hand, was looking after financial services including insurance, lending and Paytm Money. “Paytm completed the hiring of chief executive officers for the three businesses recently. This prompted the company to engage him in important roles including M&A,” said the second person. He requested not to be named as this development is private.

Bhavesh Gupta joined in August to lead Paytm lending business whereas Varun Shridhar was hired as the CEO of Paytm Money around the same time. Vineet Arora has been leading the firm's general insurance vertical since the ongoing fiscal.

Nayyar would continue to look after Paytm’s financial services business. 

Sources also said that the restructuring process is ongoing and more executives at the top and leadership positions will be given new roles. It’s worth noting that Paytm along with several large-scaled consumer internet companies is looking to go public in the next two years. It has set a target of a potential listing in 2022.

Entrackr sent queries to Paytm but it has declined to comment for the story.

While it may seem that it’s too early for the Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led company to prepare for an IPO which is almost two years away, Ola had set up a pre-IPO Trust in September last year. It was the first major sign from the ride-hailing firm towards its preparation for a public listing.

Ola had a plan to launch an IPO by late next year. However, it could be extended until 2022 as the company has been severely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Of late, there are several companies such as Flipkart, Zomato, Policybazaar and Ola who have been claiming to go public next year.  In 2022, Paytm, Delhivery, PhonePe, Oyo, BigBasket and a few others are also in the race to IPO.  

Many experts believe that the deadlines set by startups for public listing don’t seem a realistic one as these companies are yet to get close to break-even. Further, the pandemic also has disrupted the projected growth and milestones set for 2021.