 "Paytm")
Cementing ties with its largest investor further, online mobile wallet major Paytm announced that K Guru Gowrappan, global managing director of the Alibaba Group, will join its board as an additional director.
Guru is responsible for driving strong growth in Alibaba’s international markets. He is in charge of international product and business development strategy, which includes bringing all Alibaba products together into one final strategic plan and executing it in key markets. “At Paytm, he will be regularly engaging with business, product and tech teams to ensure strong and scalable growth for the company,” the company said.
Paytm has recently been expanding its board of directors with well known names such as those from Google and Goldman Sachs. According to analysts, these are telltale signs of the Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led company making itself a strong entity in the run-up to Alibaba’s entry into India.
It is still not clear what model the Chinese firm would adopt in India –alone, in collaboration with an Indian marketplace or via an acquisition. However, Paytm in which Alibaba has invested close to one billion dollars is said to be the top contender and analysts believe the induction of Gowrappan might be a step in that direction. Alibaba already has a business-to-business e-commerce presence in India.
“While having a director on the board in a company one has invested in happens all the time, Alibaba has an India play. Gowrappan is hands on with both Paytm and Alibaba and this might be a move towards bringing closer the two companies even further,” said a senior analyst with an international consultancy firm.
Sharma had said recently that they would bring in major names so that they can make a bigger play globally in the years to come. “We want to make Paytm the benchmark of world-class companies and be premier financial service company. The idea is dominate in India in a year or so and later take Paytm abroad. Not this year, not next year but we would go abroad and our board with their experience would help the company scale. It would also help us when we go to investors to raise money few years down the line.”
“We are at an important juncture in the company’s evolution, and Guru’s strong expertise in global business and product development will guide us through executing key strategic initiatives for the company,” Sharma added.
In the most recent board announcements, Mark Schwartz, vice-chairman of the Goldman Sachs Group and chairman of Goldman Sachs in Asia-Pacific, and Amit Singhal, former head of Search at Google Inc, had joined Paytm’s board of directors.
