Another top-level exit at MobiKwik as marketing and growth head resigns

MobiKwik’s marketing and growth head Damandeep Singh Soni quit the digital payments firm in another top-level exit, The Economic Times (ET) reported. Soni, who had joined the Gurugram-based company in December 2016, told ET that he has decided to look for new opportunities outside the company.

The exit of Soni, who was India head at Japanese chat app Line, comes after a number of people leaving the firm. Business chief Vineet Singh quit in April, said ET. Former 99acres’ executive vice-president Singh (https://www.techcircle.in/2016/12/15/former-99acres-evp-vineet-singh-joins-mobikwik/) had joined the digital wallet company in December 2016. 

Rukaiya Rangwala, who was heading payment gateway business, also quit in April. Retail business head Vivek Sinha left in May. In November 2017, Akash Gupta, vice-president and head of marketing, resigned from the company to launch his own green-tech venture.

Email queries to MobiKwik and Soni did not get any response till the time of publishing this report.

Soni has studied at Indian school of Business, Hyderabad, and National Institute of Technology, Rourkela. Before MobiKwik, Soni had co-founded Planet GoGo in September 2015, along with Rajat Gupta, both of whom had previously worked at Japanese chat app Line, where Soni was India head from January 2014-December 2015. While working at Line, Soni and Gupta found that people were using lock screens to discover content. This inspired them to launch Planet GoGo, according to YourStory, platform for stories related to startups and entrepreneurs. 

MobiKwik
One MobiKwik Systems Pvt. Ltd, which runs MobiKwik, saw its valuation shrink by 15% to $279 million in January 2018.

In February 2018, MobiKwik had launched a digital enterprise solutions suite to simplify corporate processes such as employee rewards and reimbursements.

MobiKwik was founded in 2009 by the husband-wife duo Bipin Preet Singh and Upasana Taku. It claims to have a network of more than 1,500,000 direct merchants and over 55 million users, and has raised about $115 million in total funds so far from Sequoia Capital, Net1, Tree Line Asia, Cisco Investments, American Express and MediaTek.

MobiKwik competes with the likes of Paytm and FreeCharge. In July last year, private-sector lender Axis Bank agreed to acquire FreeCharge from struggling e-commerce firm Snapdeal for about Rs 385 crore ($60 million).

Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led wallet firm Paytm launched a payments bank, which went live in May 2017.