Financial services major Paytm has seen at least two top-level exits in quick succession, including that of Abhishek Arun, Chief Operating Officer, Paytm Payments Bank and Renu Satti, the Chief Operating Officer, Offline Payments, who as per sources, has put in her papers after a tenure of 15 years at the firm.
The development was first reported by the newspaper Mint. However, Satti, who is also a close confidante of the Paytm CEO, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, is being asked to re-consider the decision. Abhishek Gupta, the Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice President is also expected to leave, the Mint report claimed.
"Paytm is bound to inform the stock exchanges as a public listed company about Renu's exits. So, nothing has been formalised yet," one source aware of the developments told BusinessToday.In.
According to Paytm's Red Herring Prospectus, Satti has been associated with the company since October 11, 2006 and drew nearly Rs 1.2 crore in compensation for FY21 whereas Rs 60 lakh was awarded to her as performance linked compensation. Satti also held 2.7 lakh equity shares in One97 Communications (Paytm's parent firm), which is equivalent to Rs 1.1 lakh ESOPs.
Paytm, meanwhile, declined to comment on the developments. The comments from Abhishek Gupta and Renu Satti are also still awaited.
Abhishek Arun had announced in his LinkedIn post that he has quit the Paytm after serving the company for six years. He also hinted at joining a start-up following his resignation from Paytm. The announcement comes on the heels of Paytm's rather poor debut on stock exchanges with stock prices down as much a s 40 per cent of its IPO price as on December 23.
"After a fulfilling six years at Paytm (across One97 & Paytm Payments Bank) I've made the difficult decision to leave the company and explore new opportunities. While there's still so much to do, right on the heels of hitting an important milestone with Paytm going public - I remain as passionate as ever about the need for change in our payments and financial systems - something inside has been nudging me to be part of another early-stage journey. Interestingly, this is the second time in my career when I was part of the journey of a company going public -- first with RBL Bank and now with Paytm," Arun said in his LinkedIn post.
At least five senior executives in the digital payments company had quit before the IPO in company's operations, finance, and human resources department. Paytm has raised Rs 18,300 crore during its IPO in November, the largest public listing.
Notably, Paytm had also granted Employee Stock Option Plans (ESOPs) to a pool of 120 employees in October worth Rs 347 crore and another allotment of ESOPs to its employees, mostly for the senior management amounting to Rs 188 crore in August which could be converted to shares, two separate Registrar of Companies filings showed.
Paytm's tepid listing on the bourses had raised concerns about the company's monetisation plans and the path it intended to take towards profitability. Analysts had also questioned the company's IPO price band, describing it as being fairly over-priced.
Paytm's CEO Sharma, however, had played down the overvaluation hype by saying that the company received tremendous response from the foreign institutional investors during the road-show before the IPO for anchor allotment of shares.
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