Walmart-backed fintech major PhonePe has announced the appointment of Srijon Biswas as its new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) with immediate effect, as reported by The Hindu BusinessLine. Biswas, who has been with PhonePe for nearly a decade and previously served as the Head of Engineering, will now lead the company's entire engineering organisation. The long-time engineering leader will continue to report to co-founder Rahul Chari in his new role, with Biswas based in Bengaluru. According to PhonePe, Biswas has been part of the company's technology leadership through a period of rapid growth, helping build the engineering systems across multiple teams.
As part of a broader leadership realignment, Co-founder Rahul Chari will assume the role of Chief Product and Technology Officer (CPTO), overseeing the company's technology and product functions, along with Trust & Safety, Data Sciences & Analytics, Customer Experience and other strategic initiatives across the PhonePe Group. Chari's mandate already covered technology, product, trust and safety, and data sciences and analytics, and he has recently added customer experience and artificial intelligence (AI) to his portfolio, alongside leading other strategic initiatives across the PhonePe Group. Chari stated that strengthening technology leadership is a natural step as the company continues to expand and grow, ensuring continued investment in engineering excellence while building technology platforms for the future of digital India. Biswas expressed his commitment to working with the company's engineering teams to continue building products focused on innovation, reliability and scale, stating he is excited to work with the immensely talented teams to push the boundaries of innovation, reliability, and scale as they build products that serve hundreds of millions of Indians.
The leadership changes come as PhonePe looks to monetise its large user base by expanding its investment, stockbroking, insurance and lending businesses. The company recently integrated its insurance business with the consumer payments unit following the departure of insurance head Vishal Gupta, who led the division for more than a decade and is now pursuing his own entrepreneurial venture. Consumer payments head Sonika Chandra has assumed additional responsibilities, leading the merged business units as the platform's chief business officer (CBO). In May, share market business head Ujjwal Jain quit to start Atyx.ai, an artificial intelligence-powered capital markets platform. The company entered the online investing space after acquiring WealthDesk and OpenQ in 2022 for about ₹5,700 crore (approximately $70 million), which was later consolidated under the share.market platform. The leadership changes follow a series of organisational updates at the Bengaluru-based fintech company, with the company now having more than 700 million registered users, around 200 million active users and a merchant network of about 5 crore across the country.
The appointment also follows PhonePe's decision earlier this year to pause its much-anticipated initial public offering (IPO). The company had filed updated draft papers with markets regulator SEBI and was targeting a listing that could value it at around $15 billion. However, in March, PhonePe deferred the IPO, citing heightened geopolitical tensions in West Asia and volatile equity markets, while maintaining that the delay was unrelated to its business fundamentals and that it remains committed to listing once market conditions stabilise. According to The Hindu BusinessLine, the reshuffle comes as PhonePe continues to expand beyond its core payments business into financial services and a broader portfolio of consumer products. PhonePe, which was launched in 2016, has over 700 million registered users, more than 200 million monthly active users and around 50 million merchants across India. The company, which is owned by Walmart and was spun out of Flipkart, continues to prepare for a public listing, with the company now having more than 650 million registered users and one of the country's largest engineering teams.
