Vijay Shekhar Sharma the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of One97 Communication that operates mobile wallet and e-commerce platform Paytm plans to the launch India’s first payments bank. Sharma was one among the 11 to get Reserve Bank of India (RBI) permission to start a payments bank and he aims to start the operations of the bank by the next financial year. After the RBI’s approval on payment banks finance minister ArunJaitley announced that this venture would bring more money into the system and spread the reach of banking to rural areas.
Payments banks will primarily deal in remittance services and accept deposits up to Rs 1 lakh. Those entities which got permission from RBI must invest an initial capital of Rs 100 crore and need to start their operations within 18 months.
Paytm plans to invest around Rs 1,200 crore over three years in the bank project and does not include any equity partner in its initial stage. They also plan to shift their headquarters from Noida to Bengaluru as Bengaluru was more flexible for start-ups and other e-commerce.
The company is looking to hire around 600 people for its new bank to various levels. They are also searching for people to the position of senior leaders and the CEO. Sharma proposed that they are searching for a person who has a non-banking talent and have a fresh-thought process as their CEO. But to other departments such as compliance, finance and treasury they look for people who have hard core knowledge in banking.
Sharma added that there new business model needs people who are risk takers. They prefer people who have horizontal experience in multi-sectors and work better. Sectors such as fast moving consumer goods and telecom are the main hunting grounds for their new the chief executive.
Presently, Vivek Mathur a board member of Paytm and a top banker is managing the payments bank project along with an internal team from ex-McKinsey.
