Mobikwik appoints 4 independent directors to its board

IPO-bound digital payments firm Mobikwik has appointed four independent directors to its board.  

The company said on Friday that it has brought in Punita Kumar Sinha, founder and senior managing partner at Pacific Paradigm Advisors; Sayali Karanjkar, co-founder and CBO of fintech startup PaySense; Raghu Ram Hiremagalur, CTO and VP of Engineer at LinkedIn; and retired Indian diplomat Navdeep Singh Suri. 

The move increases the number of board members to seven.  

Prior to this, only the co-founders of the platform were on the board – Bipin Preet Singh, Upasana Taku and Chandan Joshi. 

“In my extensive conversations with Punita, Navdeep, Sayali and Raghu, I have found a harmony in their beliefs and MobiKwik’s vision,” Singh said in a statement.  

“I see this as being foundational as we head into our next phase as a publicly listed company. The holistic expertise of our new Board members in our sector, public policy, technology and business will provide an added thrust to MobiKwik’s strategic direction.” 

Founded in 2009, Mobikwik has built its business by offering a digital payments wallet with UPI transfer and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) facility. 

The company is on the road to an IPO (initial public offering) of up to Rs 1,900 crore ($255 million), which includes a portion of fresh issuance of shares worth Rs 1,500 crore and a secondary sale of shares worth Rs 400 crore from existing investors.  

According to the Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) filed with markets regulator SEBI last month, Sequoia India, the second largest shareholder in the company, will get close to Rs 95 crore from the sale of shares in the IPO.  

Other selling shareholders are American Express, Cisco Systems, Baja Finance and Tree Line Asia.  

Mobikwik claims to have become profitable at segment level with more than 108 million users and 3.4 million merchants on its platform. The company’s revenue has seen a (CAGR) of 37% in the last 2 years. 

In the fintech space, it goes against the likes of Google Pay, Amazon Pay, PhonePe as well as Paytm, which has also filed for an IPO.  

Since the pandemic, the sector has seen significant growth as users shifted towards digital transactions to avoid contact and carry out transactions remotely. Even food-tech giant Zomato has also incorporated a digital payments entity.