Lendingkart appoints former Souq, PayUMoney execs at senior management positions

Lendingkart Technologies Pvt Ltd, which provides working capital loans to SMEs, has appointed Vishal Chopra as chief revenue officer and Nihit Nirmal as senior vice president - products division, it said in a statement.

Prior to joining Lendingkart, Chopra was regional director at Souq.com, a Dubai-based ecommerce firm. An alumnus of ISB Hyderabad, Chopra was one of the first hires for Amazon's India team that launched Amazon.in and Junglee.com that curates products from online and offline sellers. He led a cross-functional team in the media categories section (books, movies and music) at Amazon India and was also in charge of the third-party marketplace business for media categories.

"In my new role (at Lendingkart), I will be looking at strengthening existing revenues and introducing new lines of business. Marketing, sales operations and customer experience will also be part of my focus areas to help the firm expand," Chopra said.

Nirmal has joined Lendingkart from PayUMoney where he led the product management division. At Lendingkart, he will drive product strategy.

"Tech-driven SMEs will play a role in India's next phase of growth. My focus will be on helping build technology products that solve problems of capital accessibility for SMEs," Nirmal said.

These appointments come after the firm raised $32 million (around Rs 205 crore) in a Series B round of funding round in June led by Bertelsmann India Investments (BII) to strengthen its data science capabilities, enhance its technology platform and improve its mobile capabilities.

In April, former HT Media executive Anand Mishra joined the startup as vice president of the product analytics division.

Lendingkart, set up in 2014 by Harshvardhan Lunia and Mukul Sachan, offers working capital loans to small businesses. The firm operates out of Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Mumbai, but offers its services across India.

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