Paytm appoints ex-Citigroup executive Madhur Deora as CFO

Mobile payment and e-commerce company Paytm, owned by One97 Communications has appointed former Citigroup executive Madhur Deora as it chief financial officer and senior vice president, according to a statement.

Deora, an alumnus of Wharton School, was earlier with Citigroup Investment Banking as managing director, where he handled the firm's TMT and private equity clients.

In his new role, he will be responsible for building and managing the company's newly formed financial services business.

"Madhur has been a long-term friend and partner of Paytm. I am extremely happy to welcome him onboard. His expertise will help us to build our newly formed financial services business into one of the largest from India," Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and CEO of Paytm, said in the statement.

In March, Paytm appointed former Alibaba Group Holding executive Bhushan Patil as its president.

A month prior to that, it named Shinjini Kumar, a former Reserve Bank of India executive and director at PricewaterhouseCoopers, the CEO of its yet-to-launch payments bank. The same month, it appointed Barclays executive Krishna Hegde to head the consumer investment products division of the payments bank.

It has also hired several other executives for its payments bank, including Saurabh Sharma from Bharti Airtel Ltd and former RBI deputy general manager Vipin Surelia.

However, VP of payments bank Vikas Purohit, who had joined from Amazon in December, quit the firm in June, within seven months of joining.

Paytm, which is one of the 11 applicants that received in-principle approval for a payments bank licence, is likely to launch the business during this festive season.

In August, One 97 Communications Ltd, which runs mobile payments and e-commerce platform Paytm, received commitment of $60 million (Rs 403 crore) from Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek Inc.'s Mountain Capital fund, which valued the company at $4.8 billion.

Existing investor Alibaba Group is also likely to put in at least $60 million in this round.

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