Rakesh Singh has taken over as chief executive of One 97 Communication’s wealth management platform, Paytm Money, from Varun Sridhar, who has led the company since 2020. Singh oversaw broking services as CEO of PayU-backed fintech Fisdom.
According to persons with knowledge of the situation, Paytm Money, the wealth management platform owned by One 97 Communications Ltd., has named Rakesh Singh as its next CEO, succeeding Varun Sridhar, who has held the position since 2020.
According to one of the people, Singh, who was the CEO of brokerage services at PayU-backed Fisdom, joined Paytm Money last month. Sridhar has since been transferred to a different position inside the company.
Paytm Money, which rivals services like Groww, Upstox, Zerodha, and Angel One, turned a profit under Sridhar’s leadership. With revenue of Rs 132.8 crore, the wealthtech platform ended FY23 with a net profit of Rs 42.8 crore.
Questions were not answered by Paytm at the time of writing.
Paytm’s stock and mutual fund trading division recently welcomed another senior hire. According to an ET story from February, Paytm Money named Vipul Mewada as its chief financial officer. Mewada was ICICI Securities’ previous deputy CFO.
The top decks in the digital wealth management space have changed recently. At least four senior executives of Kotak Cherry, the Kotak Mahindra Bank-operated digital wealth management app, including its CEO Srikanth Subramanian, are reportedly planning to join rival brokerage business Angel One, according to an ET story published on January 15.
Bengaluru-based Paytm Money focuses on stock markets and mutual fund investments, and is a major player in the direct mutual funds space, where schemes are offered without the involvement of a third party distributor. However, Paytm Money has lagged its rivals in the stockbroking sweepstakes. According to data from the National Stock Exchange, Paytm Money’s active trading client base is around 760,000. The number of systematic investment plans (SIPs) run through the platform is around 860,000. Its biggest rival Groww has nearly 7.6 million clients, while Zerodha’s user base is 6.7 million customers.