Paytm Appoints Bhavesh Gupta As COO, President Amid Profitability Push

One97 Communications Limited (OCL), the parent company of fintech giant Paytm, on Tuesday announced that it has appointed Bhavesh Gupta as the company’s Chief Operating Officer (COO) and President, the company disclosed in a regulatory filing.

In his role as President and Chief Operating Officer of the Company, Gupta – who has been a financial services professional for the past 25 years – will be responsible to lead verticals of lending, insurance, payments – online and offline, consumer payments and drive key initiatives including user growth, operations risk, fraud risk and compliance.

Prior to joining Paytm in 2020, Gupta held multiple leadership roles including CEO of Clix Capital (formerly known as GE Capital), and Head of SME and Business Banking at IDFC Bank. He was also associated with ICICI bank in various roles.

This comes at a time when the company is pushing for profitability. After having narrowed its losses in the fourth quarter of FY23, Paytm’s chief executive officer (CEO) Vijay Shekhar Sharma recently said the company’s next objective is to achieve cashflow profitability.

The fintech giant, in its Q4 results for FY23, managed to narrow its losses to Rs 168 crore. This compares to losses of Rs 392 crore a quarter ago and Rs 761 crore in the year-ago period.

Revenues of the firm also surged almost 52 per cent year-on-year (YoY) to Rs 2,335 crore in Q4, up from Rs 1,541 crore. On a yearly basis, Paytm’s revenues grew by 61 per cent YoY to Rs 7,990 crore in FY23.

This was largely driven by growth in the company’s payments and loan distribution business, coupled with a rise in gross merchandise value (GMV). Also, higher revenue from merchant subscriptions contributed to the growth.

Paytm continued to witness sustained growth in GMV during Q4 — its GMV stood at Rs 3.62 trillion, an increase of 40 per cent YoY. Its loan distribution business continued to scale as well, in partnership with the firm’s lending partners.