MobiKwik hires Fullerton India exec to start digital lending biz

Digital payments firm MobiKwik on Tuesday said it had roped in former Fullerton India Credit executive Vinayak N as the head of its lending business, one day after marketing and growth head Damandeep Singh Soni quit the Gurugram-based company in another top-level exit. 

MobiKwik will roll out digital lending solutions, in partnership with banks and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), for which Vinayak will be responsible. His role will include designing products for credit requirements of Indians, forging partnerships, and launching the products in the market. “We are working on creating an end-to-end lending product portfolio that will provide instant credit solutions to the masses, digitally,” said Vinayak. Upasana Taku, co-founder and director, MobiKwik, said, “Digital financial services in India will disrupt the market just like China.”

Vinayak has over 15 years of experience with many multinational and Indian banking & financial services companies. He has joined MobiKwik from NBFC Fullerton India Credit, where he was head of alliances and was focusing on both digital and non-digital partnerships.
 
Before Fullerton, Vinayak held portfolios in risk and product domains at Bajaj Finance. He has also been the head of business and insurance at Capital First, where he launched the cross-sell business.

MobiKwik
The firm is seeing exits at the top level. Damandeep Singh Soni, who had joined the Gurugram-based company in December 2016, quit yesterday. 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 The Economic Times. Former 99acres’ executive vice-president Singh 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.

As well as attrition, MobiKwik saw its valuation shrink by 15% to $279 million in January 2018.

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