Former Paytm employees who are building exceptional Businesses

Following in the footsteps of Zomato, Paytm, an Indian multinational technology company that specialises in digital payment systems has filed to raise some $2.2 billion in what’s set to be the country’s largest IPO signalling the arrival of India’s tech moment. Over the years Paytm has established itself as a fintech giant and has also emerged as the breeding ground for several new start-ups that are set to rule their respective domains led by their ex-CXOs. The following are some of the most successful businesses and their founders that once held leadership roles at Paytm:

1. Deepak Abott, Indiagold: Deepak Abott, Senior Vice President of Products at Paytm, and Nitin Mishra, Senior Vice President and Business Head at Paytm, founded Indiagold to digitally transform gold lending in India. Deepak Abott is a well-known figure in the start-up industry and is known for product and growth hacking. The company has a trusted following of 8 lakh customers and provides instant gold loans and secure gold locker services throughout Delhi NCR and Indore.

2. Dushyant Saraswat, Hunter Games: Dushyant Saraswat, along with Shaunak Naik and Gargi Srivastava, launched Hunter Games to make gamification accessible to all industries and use-cases. The company is the first Gamification Platform company adding massive engagements with hyper-casual Gaming content but with the heavy-lifting on Revenue outcomes driven by its deep campaign management platform and bound with the glue of Promotional tokens. Dushyant Saraswat may have founded Hunter Games back in 2019, but he has been building and running leading businesses in Gaming, Payments, E-commerce, Banking, Telco services and FMCG for a long time.  Dushyant Saraswat has previously put together and run the Alibaba – Paytm Joint Venture on Gaming; he also served as the CMO of Paytm payments Bank and headed the department for customer lifecycle, revenue, and growth at the company. He was also the Director at Disney Interactive Media Group. During his tenure at Disney, it grew to be Indias leading mobile gaming developer and publisher and one of the single leading brands for digital brand solutions.

3. Pravin Jadhav, Raise Financial: Pravin Jadhav, the former CEO of Paytm Money, founded Raise Financial in 2021. This fintech company is a money management platform that also plans to expand into the insurance distribution segment. By the end of the year, the company decided to introduce its stock trading and investment product and is also in the early stages of discussions to integrate insurance and money management services. The company has raised an undisclosed amount in a seed funding round from Mirae Asset’s early-stage fund, US-based Social Leverage and Blume Ventures Founders’ Fund, among others.

4. Prerna Kalra, Daalchini: Daalchini was founded in 2017 by two ex-Paytm executives, Prerna Kalra and Vidya Bhushan. This food-tech start-up is a smart retail offerings brand that caters to on-the-go food consumption through a specialised supply chain designed to meet customers’ 6-meal-a-day needs. Prerna Kalra has worked with Paytm for over six years as the general manager of products at Paytm Payments Bank, while Vidya Bhushan was the product manager of the offline payment segment. They provide a complete product platform consisting of vending machines, micro-markets, automated kiosks and mobility solutions.