Bangalore (Karnataka), 16th May 2023: All three founders of the Bangalore-based digital lending platform ZestMoney have quit, putting the eight-year-old company and its 100 workers in jeopardy. This comes two months after a deal to be purchased by Walmart-owned PhonePe, fell through.
CEO Lizzie Chapman wrote a message to employees on Monday evening that announced their resign. The message read, “Over the last few weeks, we have done a lot of thinking, and it has been hard for us to arrive at this conclusion. We have decided to step down from our roles as CEO (Lizzie), CFO and COO (Priya), and CTO (Ashish) at ZestMoney.”
Priya Sharma was the company’s chief financial officer and chief operational officer, while Ashish Anantharaman was the company’s chief technology officer. Chapman stated that the three will continue to be the company’s “biggest cheerleaders” and stockholders.
Chapman further mentioned in a Slack Post, “The new management team who will step up at this time and we will do absolutely everything we can to support them and you, both over the next 4 months as we transition, and over the longer term.”
PhonePe was in talks to purchase lending firm ZestMoney in November 2022, a move that would have marked the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) leader’s entry into digital lending.
According to rumours, the deal was worth between $200 and $300 million. However, in March, the Walmart-backed fintech decacorn withdrew out of the agreement, alleging due diligence concerns, leaving ZestMoney in disarray.
ZestMoney had also cut off approximately 20% of its personnel, while working on a business continuity strategy.
