MobiKwik elevates Mrinal Sinha as COO

Mobile payments company One MobiKwik Systems Pvt Ltd has elevated its chief strategy officer Mrinal Sinha to the post of COO and roped in Manish Chaturvedi from American Express as the new Chief of strategy, it said on Wednesday.

Chaturvedi will be responsible for driving acceptance of MobiKwik wallet across formats and industries besides managing key initiatives with banks and government entities.

"Given his extensive experience in building retail payments network, which delivered a delightful user experience and scaled to millions of users, he is an excellent addition to lead our future efforts at expanding partnerships with retailers," said Bipin Preet Singh, founder and CEO of MobiKwik.

Chaturvedi, an alumnus of FMS (Delhi), was serving as the director-global merchant services at American Express.

Sinha will now be responsible for administering and coordinating the operational activities of the business as the COO. He holds a BTech-MTech degree from IIT Madras and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

He had co-founded Brattle Foods, a food supply chain solutions and logistics business before joining MobiKwik. Prior to that, he worked as the manager, corporate strategy at EMC Corporation, and several other companies such as ICICI Venture, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and McKinsey & Company.

"In the last one year, Mrinal has demonstrated real value in driving business and put in an outstanding performance since he joined MobiKwik. Hence the decision to put him at the helm of affairs at MobiKwik was natural," added Singh.

Earlier this year, the company had brought in former vice president (marketing and product strategy) at travel startup Ixigo, Saurabh Srivastava as the chief marketing officer. Last November it appointed MakeMyTrip's former VP of technology Virender Bisht as its chief technology officer.

MobiKwik has secured nearly $30 million in venture funding to date from Sequoia Capital, American Express, Tree Line Asia, and Cisco Investments. It claims to have a userbase of nearly 25 million and has partnerships with around 50,000 retailers. It competes with the likes of Paytm in the wallet business and recently lost out in the race for getting a payments bank licence.