MobiKwik ropes in Virender Bisht from MakeMyTrip as its CTO

Gurgaon-based One MobiKwik Systems Pvt Ltd, which owns and operates the online recharge platform Mobikwik.com, has appointed Virender Bisht as its chief technology officer (CTO). In his new role, Bisht will oversee all aspects of product research & development, user experience design, and tech infrastructure at the company.

Commenting on the appointment, Bipin Preet Singh, founder and CEO, MobiKwik, said, "We are a product focused startup and believe that creating a wow payment experience for our consumers will result in strong acceptance of our digital wallet. Bisht will play a critical role in creating a robust engineering team at MobiKwik which will further reflect in our product."

Bisht has over 12 years of work experience and prior to MobiKwik, he was the VP of technology development at MakeMyTrip.com. Before that, he held the position of director of engineering at companies like Educomp Solutions Ltd and Studyplaces. He had earlier also worked at companies like Tribalfusion, Inc., Tata Consultancy Services, and GE Healthcare. He holds a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra.

"I am excited to join MobiKwik at a stage when it is evolving into the next level of growth. My aim is to leverage my experience to develop high quality products for MobiKwik that provide delightful experiences to our customers," said Bisht.

Singh added that the company is aggressively hiring and plans to double the strength of its technology team of Android engineers, Java engineers, server engineers, UI frontend engineers, and UX designers. The company also plans to make other strategic appointments over the next 2-3 months, which include a chief marketing officer, head of business development & partnerships, and head of products.

Founded in 2009 by Singh, and Upasana Taku (head- business development and merchant operations), MobiKwik enables prepaid mobile, DTH and data card recharges, post-paid mobile bills payment and utility bill payment for electricity, gas and landline connections. It also offers these services via SMS, phone and apps that are available for Android, iOS and ​​​Windows platforms. The firm recently revamped its website and logo.

The company claimed that it has partnered with more than 5,000 businesses across e-commerce, online food ordering, cab services and QSR chains in the country to offer digital wallets so that consumers can directly pay from their wallets while shopping online. Consumers can also make P2P money transfer using the wallet.

The company claims to have 10 million registered users and sees more than 2 lakh transactions per day, of which 5,000-10,000 are happening across e-com platforms. Mobile contributes more than 85 per cent of the total business.

Earlier this month, Techcircle.in had exclusively reported that the company is in advanced talks with more than three large VC funds in India, Southeast Asia and the US to raise $20-30 million in a Series B round of funding.

"We are in advanced talks with a few investors, whose names cannot be disclosed as of now. We will close the round by the end of this month," Upasana had said at the time. MobiKwik had earlier raised under $5 million in its Series A funding from an unnamed US-based VC firm last year.