Two senior executives Mukesh Bansal hired leave the company in less than a year.
According to numerous individuals with knowledge of the proceedings, Vinay Choletti, the former head of WhatsApp Pay in India who left Meta four months after taking on the position, is in advanced stages of negotiations to join Tata Digital in its payments division.
Tata Digital, the company behind the ambitious e-commerce mega app Neu, has been working to market and sell the group’s financial services to users through the development of its unified payments interface (UPI) play. After Manesh Mahatme left the post to work for Amazon, Choletti, a former Amazon Pay executive, was given the authority to lead WhatsApp Pay in India. Before being promoted to CEO of WhatsApp Pay, Cholleti worked there for roughly 15 months as head of merchant payments.
At least two senior executives who were hired by Tata Digital president Mukesh Bansal, Sharath Bulusu and Prateek Mehta, have left the company. After less than a year at Tata group, Bulusu and Mehta both quit the ecommerce division of the Mumbai-based conglomerate.
As ET reported in April, they were a part of the group Bansal was assembling. While Mehta joined AngelOne, Bulusu, a former Myntra executive, returned to Google. These departures follow the first senior-level departure from Tata Digital, which occurred in July after CTO and founding member Sauvik Banerjjee made the decision to leave.
The chief business officer of the Tata Group, Harveer Singh, will get reports from Choletti about Tata Payments and NeuPass.
ET’s inquiry was not replied by a Tata Digital representative, while mails left for Cholletti went unanswered.
Bhanu Pathak, Shoumyan Biswas, and Gunjan Ghai still hold prominent positions at Tata Digital and actively participate in daily operations. In addition to Bansal, who founded the fitness start-up Cultfit, Pratik Pal serves as CEO of Tata Digital.
Tata Neu was ultimately introduced on April 7 with extensive marketing during the Indian Premier League, following multiple delays (IPL). As a result of the defects and operational problems that Neu identified, ET revealed in June that it had not reached its gross sales goal in the first month. According to those with knowledge of the situation, the corporation has been attempting to resolve these problems. Along with firms like Reliance’s JioMart and others, its main competitors continue to be Walmart-owned Flipkart and Amazon India.
The two companies Tata Digital bought, egrocer BigBasket and epharmacy 1mg, share the primary growth drivers on Neu. According to a December 21 story from ET, BigBasket has raised $200 million in new funding from Tata Digital and others, valuing the company at $3.2 billion. In September, 1 mg became a unicorn thanks to a $40 million funding. According to ET, it is also now being integrated into the BigBasket app.
