Paytm hires former RBI executive as bank CEO

Paytm had been in talks with Shinjini Kumar for the last few months and an announcement of her appointment is expected in the first week of March

Mobile wallet service provider, Paytm is learnt to have zeroed in on Shinjini Kumar to be the chief executive officer (CEO) of its soon-to-be-launched payments bank. She was director at PricewaterhouseCooper (PwC). Paytm had been in talks with Kumar for the past few months and the formal announcement of her appointment would happen in the first week of March.

"Kumar with her diverse background of having worked in Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Bank of America and PwC was a perfect fit for the company," said a source. However, Paytm refused to comment.

Paytm's core payments banking team has more than 40 people. The company is preparing to start operations by second half of this year.
 

Kumar, alumni of University of Texas, was deputy general manager at RBI and had a stint at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. As a director at PwC, Kumar headed the Western India regulatory practice, focusing on regulations dealing with banking and financial services. She has been with PwC for the past five years.

Paytm plans to invest Rs 1,200 crore in the payments bank during the first three years. Among the senior executives who have already joined Paytm for the banking business include Kshitij Sanghi, who was earlier with McKinsey. Sanghi will look at the technology side as a vice-president. Narendra Singh, a former BCG employee, has been hired as deputy general manager for project management. Also, Varun Khullar, who worked for ITC earlier, has joined as vice-president to look at partnerships. Vikas Purohit, formerly with Amazon, is also a vice-president and is looking after branch and business correspondent network.

Paytm payments bank would set up nearly 20 signature branches. In addition, there will be 200 smaller store-like branches and at least 1,000 agents.

Founded by Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Paytm is one of the 11 entities including Airtel, Vodafone, Aditya Birla Group among others that secured a licence from the RBI in August 2015 to establish payments bank. The entities which got permission from the RBI must have an initial capital of Rs 100 crore each and will have to start operations within 18 months, the RBI had said in August 2015.