Bansal will be join
PhonePe co-founders Sameer Nigam and Rahul Chari and Rohit Bhagat on the board.
Also Read: Inside India’s Quest to Fix Its Payments Puzzle
Bhagat is currently the
independent director at PhonePe’s largest stakeholder
Flipkart Private Ltd and private sector lender Axis Bank Ltd., and its fintech payments entity,
Freecharge.
In the past, Bhagat was also in the board of various
fintech's such as digital lending startup,
Capital Float, and is a senior advisor with global equity investing firm,
B Capital Group.
There will be two other independent directors from the US-retail giant Walmart appointed to PhonePe’s board, as the Bengaluru-based digital payments major looks to add more senior advisors from the BFSI sector to its board.
The list of directors will be finalized by the first quarter of next year, Sameer Nigam said.
Flipkart co-founder and former group chief executive
Binny Bansal in November 2018 had abruptly resigned from the e-commerce major following an internal investigation into an allegation of “serious personal misconduct". After his exit, he had co-founded startup consultancy xto10x Technologies.
Since then, Bansal has also undertaken several philanthropic initiatives and invested in fintech including Insurtech player, Acko General Insurance and gold loans marketplace Rupeek.
Sameer Nigam, founder and CEO at PhonePe, said while the company has enough capital runway which will bolster its independent operations, PhonePe can raise strategic capital from BFSI and traditional financial service segments in the long run.
“Flipkart and PhonePe are already among the more prominent Indian digital platforms with over 250 million users each. This partial spin-off gives PhonePe access to dedicated long-term capital to pursue our vision of providing financial inclusion to a billion Indians," he stated.
As a result of the corporate restructuring, PhonePe’s Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) pool will be also be independent of Flipkart, with all employees having the right to receive PhonePe ESOP.
-PTC News
