PayU India fintech investments head and former CEO Amrish Rau quits

Amrish Rau, head of fintech investments and partnerships at PayU India, has quit the firm after a little over three years at the Naspers-owned firm.

“It’s now time. Time to go again. Time to have another new experience. Corporate to startup to M&A to angel investing to... I leave behind PayU, LazyPay, Citrus and a bit of my heart,” Rau wrote in a Twitter thread announcing his exit.

PayU is the e-payments arm of South African conglomerate Naspers-owned global consumer internet group and technology firm Prosus. Rau took charge as PayU CEO at the time of the acquisition of Mumbai-based payments gateway startup Citrus Pay by the former in 2016 in a $130 million, all-cash transaction.

Following the acquisition, Rau took over as CEO for PayU India and served in that role till March last year. He stepped down from the CEO role to make way for former Reliance Industries executive Anirban Mukherjee and went on to head the company’s fintech investments and partnerships.

“For founders - Exits are a responsibility. Selling the company is not the end of the journey. Delivering a safe acquisition for the buyer is. Indian #startup ecosystem needs this,” Rau added.

Rau joined the Citrus Pay founding team as managing director in 2013. His departure from PayU follows a little over six months after Jitendra Gupta, co-founder of Citrus Pay and former PayU managing director, quit the company to start his own venture. His new fintech startup Amica Financial Holdings reportedly raised $24 million in November last year from venture capital firms Sequoia Capital India and Matrix Partners India among others.

The Citrus Pay sale delivered one of the earliest and most profitable exits in the country’s nascent fintech sector to early investors such as Sequoia and Ascent Capital. The startup has also spawned a whole new generation of fintech entrepreneurs over the years.

Read: Fintech and beyond: The Citrus Cartel is producing some juicy startup ideas

While Rau has not yet elaborated on his plans for the future, he had been an active angel investor for a few years. His investments include former PayU executive Shailaz Nag’s fintech startup Dot, a higher education counselling platform Leverage Edu and online ledger accounting platform Khata Book.