Paytm appoints Rajeev Agarwal as independent director; Neeraj Arora steps down

Paytm on Monday announced that it has appointed Rajeev Krishnamuralilal Agarwal as non-executive independent director of the company, according to a stock exchange filing.

Agarwal will join Paytm with immediate effect for a term of five consecutive years. Former Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer Aggarwal is currently serving as independent director of companies such as U GRO Capital, Star Health, TRUST Mutual Fund  and ACC Limited.

Meanwhile, Paytm has also announced the resignation of Neeraj Arora who was the non-executive independent director of the firm. For the unaware, Arora is the former executive of Meta-owned WhatsApp and was previously associated with Google Inc. Currently, he is the founder of halloapp, Inc.

Arora had rejoined the Paytm board in 2021 after quitting the position in 2018.

The Paytm group has been going through a top level rejig for a while. Last month, Bhavesh Gupta, the chief operating officer and president of Paytm, resigned from the firm citing personal reasons. 

In April, Paytm Payments Bank’s CEO and managing director Surinder Chawla resigned from the company. During the same month, Paytm’s chief marketing officer (CMO) Sumit Mathur left the company while Paytm Money’s CEO Varun Sridhar also stepped down from the executive position.

The company is also considering selling its movie and ticketing business to foodtech major Zomato. As per reports, the deal size will be anywhere from $190-210 million.

Paytm’s revenue from operations grew 25% to Rs 9,978 crore in FY24 from Rs 7,990 crore in FY23. The company managed to reduce its net losses by 20% to Rs 1,422 crore in the last fiscal year while it maintained its EBITDA profitability before ESOP throughout the year which stood at Rs 559 crore.