Exclusive: Former 99acres EVP Vineet Singh joins MobiKwik as chief business officer

Former 99acres EVP Vineet Singh has joined digital wallet company MobiKwik as chief business officer. The company confirmed the development to Techcircle.

Singh, who was part of the management team of Info Edge (India) Ltd and sales head of its internet properties, 99Acres.com, Jeevansathi.com and Naukri.com, left the firm in October 2014 and founded an online marketplace for building materials, Buildzar.com, last year.

Singh too confirmed that he was joining MobiKwik.

This year in April, Singh made an undisclosed investment in realty portal Housing.com, and took up the advisory role at the realty startup .

His contract for the advisor position at Housing comes to an end in February, Singh said.

MobiKwik was founded in 2009 by the husband wife duo of Bipin Preet Singh and Upasana Taku. The company has so far raised $120 million in funding and some of its investors include Sequoia, American Express, Tree Line Asia and MediaTek, among others.

Ever since demonetisation, it's the consumer wallet companies that have benefited the most. The move has led to a severe cash crunch and prompted many to increasingly use digital payment options such as net banking and mobile wallets such as those offered by MobiKwik and its rival Paytm.

MobiKwik's marketing budget is typically $15-20 million a year, but has tripled after demonetisation. It plans to invest Rs 25 crore over the next three months on major advertising campaigns.

The company, which has also increased its target of gross transaction value 10-fold to $10 billion next year, claims to have 40 million users and 2.5 lakh offline and online merchants on its platform. The company said it is recording 1.5 million transactions a day on its platform. That compares with 7 million transactions that arch rival Paytm claims.