MobiKwik hires Delhivery exec to lead payment gateway and international biz

Digital payments firm MobiKwik has appointed Sushant Kashyap as the business head for its payment gateway and international business, a company statement said.

Prior to joining MobiKwik, Kashyap was a senior vice president at logistics firm Delhivery, spearheading sales and business development for the company. Previously, he spent over 10 years at Bharti Airtel, managing multiple portfolios across sales and marketing. He is an alumnus of University of Glasgow.

“Sushant will also be spearheading MobiKwik’s international expansion strategy as we begin our journey to venture into newer terrains. His diverse cross-cultural experience and global scale-up expertise will be handy as we script our global growth story,” Upasana Taku, co-founder and director, MobiKwik said in the statement.

Launched in 2011, MobiKwik’s payment gateway business claims to power payments for more than 30,000 e-commerce websites and apps. The company is targeting 400% growth for this business arm and wants to double the number of merchants in the next one year. Its client base include Uber, Zomato, Domino’s Pizza, Maruti Suzuki, IRCTC and Vodafone.

“I envisage that the MobiKwik Payment Business will process online payments in excess of $20 billion in the next 2-3 years. We aim to further strengthen our partner base across existing industry verticals and will particularly focus on education, financial services, utility and new age startup companies,” Kashyap said.

In July, MobiKwik strengthened its top leadership by appointing business heads for three different verticals. Former OLX executive Deepak Batra became the head of the online business, former Reckitt Benckiser executive Jalaj Khurana joined as head of the unorganised retail vertical, while former Credit Suisse executive Chandan Joshi oversees organised retail.

In June, it hired former Fullerton India Credit executive Vinayak N as head of its lending business.

In its push towards becoming a financial services platform, MobiKwik launched digital insurance on its app last month. The platform will initially provide accidental insurance and will add a range of life insurance and general insurance products in partnership with insurance companies. Users can buy the products over the app or the website.

MobiKwik had also introduced SafeGold, a platform where users can buy and sell digital gold. The product is similar to the one launched by competitor Paytm. The mobile wallet player had previously released an instant credit product called Boost and entered into wealth management services after acquiring Clearfunds. MobiKwik plans to spend close to $15 million (Rs 107 crore) over the next one year to develop its wealth management business.

Founded in 2009 by the husband-wife duo Bipin Preet Singh and Taku, MobiKwik competes with Alibaba-backed Paytm and Flipkart’s payments vertical PhonePe. It has thus far raised about $115 million in external funding from investors such as Sequoia Capital, Net1, Tree Line Asia, Cisco Investments, American Express, Bajaj Finance and MediaTek.