Eyeing overseas expansion, mobile commerce firm Paytm today appointed ex-head of Alibaba Group Holding's wholesale business, Bhushan Patil, as its new president.
"We want to offer Indian merchants a compelling commerce platform and Bhushan brings incredible experience of building cross border commerce.
"As Paytm continues to grow at an exponential pace, it is important for Paytm to expand its operations outside India for further development," Paytm CEO and Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma said in a statement.
His key areas at Paytm would include building company's cross-border commerce.
The appointment comes within a week of Chinese e-commerce major Alibaba, an investor in Paytm, saying that it is planning to enter India this year.
Patil served five-and-a-half years at the Chinese company, where he was handling operations of Alibaba.Com. He was instrumental in leading new initiatives for global markets business development across SME linked associations, banks, government trade organisations, local trade services and e-companies.
"I'm thrilled to come on board at one of the fastest scaling payments and commerce platforms in the country and look forward to a mutually successful tenure at Paytm," Patil said.
Paytm claims to have over 125 million users. It is also planning to launch its payments bank soon.
Paytm's investors include Ant Financials (AliPay), Alibaba Group, SAIF Partners, Sapphire Venture and Silicon Valley Bank.
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While small shopkeepers would be able to accept card payments of up to Rs 50,000 a month based on self declaration of details on the updated Paytm app, no such limit will apply once they get converted into a full Paytm merchant, which requires a filling up of eKYC forms.
"Our people are aggressively in the field, converting these merchants into full Paytm merchants, where the Rs 50,000 limit does not apply," Sharma said.
Paytm - an Alibaba-backed company - does not have plans to list in the next three years, according to Sharma.
To a query on whether the company had incurred losses in the last financial year, he said, "We had Rs 1,000 crore revenue and the expenditure stood at Rs 2,500 crore. So, it (loss) was around Rs 1,500 crore."
Stating that the company preferred to look at "cash flow math" rather than profit and loss, he said once the company launches payments bank, new revenue line items - with lesser spends - will come up.
"We look at how much of cash came, and how much of cash went. Incidentally, we always have cash to run for the next three years in our business. If we ever see less money in the bank, we quickly top up some... Some days back, we topped up some money. Right now, what we are spending will still allow us to continue for next two years at current spend pace," he added.
Sharma admitted that the company's payments bank plans were "delayed".
"We have been working with RBI for the last few months for completing the process and many other steps. We are no more going to give a guideline because we are flawlessly delayed in the timeline that we had expected, which was Diwali. So as soon as it happens, we will come back (with announcement)," Sharma said.
Paytm had earlier intended to start its payments bank operations by August this year.
The upcoming payments bank should make money in two years after its launch, Sharma hoped.
