Exclusive: BharatPe fills CTO position after 7 months; ropes in Razorpay SVP

Seven months after BharatPe’s CTO Vijay Aggarwal resigned, the company has appointed Pankaj Goel as its chief technical officer (CTO), according to sources aware of the development. Goel was the senior vice president and head of payments engineering at Razorpay prior to this.

“Pankaj Goel joined BharatPe on Wednesday after leaving Razorpay last week,” said one of the sources on the condition of anonymity.

The CTO post at the Delhi-based unicorn was vacant since November when Aggarwal resigned around the same time when there were a bunch of other exits from BharatPe. These included Nehul Malhotra (head of PostPe) Rajat Jain (chief product officer: lending and Geetanshu Singla (vice president, technology) also resigned from BharatPe in the same month.

On Wednesday, Goel also announced his departure from Razorpay. As per sources, BharatPe is likely to announce the new appointment this week or Monday.

BharatPe declined to comment on the story. Queries sent to Goel did not elicit an immediate response.

Before Razorpay, Goel was with Intuit India for more than 10 years across various roles including product development leader and group development leader.

While BharatPe has filled the CTO position, its search for a CEO continues. The company’s CFO Nalin Negi has been acting as an interim CEO since January.

Ever since the resignation of Ashneer Grover in March 2022, BharatPe has seen back to back exits which include co-founder Bhavik Kodaliya, chief executive officer Suhail Sameer, chief revenue officer Nitish Sharma and head of institutional debt partnership Chandrima Dhar.

After the exit of top level executives, BharatPe has also announced a bunch of key hirings in 2023. In January, it appointed Ambuj Bhalla as its Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and roped in Rahul Bhatia as Head-Internal Audit. In February, Aparna Kuppuswamy joined the firm as Chief Risk Officer whereas Sandeep Indurkar became chief business office (CBO) in May and Kohinoor Biswas joined the company as the head of consumer lending in June.