Former Ola CBO Sidharth Shakdher Becomes CMO and Business Head at Paytm

Nitin Konde, Varun Bhardwaj

Oct 25, 2024 — 2 min read

Sidharth Shakdher Joins Paytm as CMO and Business Head

According to reports, Sidharth Shakdher has been named the new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Business Head of Paytm, a fintech company.

Within nine months of joining the company run by Bhavish Aggarwal, Shakdher left Ola. Among other accomplishments, he was instrumental in the establishment of the consumer loans section, the Ola Loyalty programme, and the ONDC food delivery service.

Shakdher’s New Role

Shakdher will collaborate closely with Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the CEO of Paytm, in his new position to grow the company and increase profitability. Shakdher has over 25 years of experience and has held important executive positions at Disney+Hotstar, Samsung, Canon, HP, Xerox, and Amazon, among other large corporations.

He served as Disney+ Hotstar's EVP and CMO prior to joining Ola, where he helped with the platform's global expansion and direct-to-consumer approach.

Before that, Shakdher oversaw Amazon's US category marketing and third-party marketplace. In addition to his many responsibilities, he spearheaded innovation for Reckitt's main brand, Dettol, in North America. He launched and successfully established Dettol in the US personal care market.

Shakdher oversaw marketing, category operations, growth, and revenue in both India and foreign markets in his capacity as CBO at Ola. With international teams directly answering to him, he also led new business endeavours in e-commerce, financial services, and AI cloud services.

Paytm’s Current Financial Report Card

The parent company of the digital payments platform Paytm, One 97 Communications Ltd., announced a notable improvement in its financial results for the second quarter that concluded in September 2024. In sharp contrast to the INR 290 crore loss reported a year earlier, the company reported a profit of INR 930 crore during the period.

The company's one-time gain of INR 1,345.4 crore from the sale of its event and movie ticketing services to Zomato Limited was the main driver of its profitability. With a loss of INR 495 crore, Paytm's core business operations remained negative, excluding this extraordinary item. The company's revenue from operations decreased by 34% year-on-year to INR 1,659 crore, a modest increase from the INR 1,501 crore reported in the previous quarter.

Paytm Receives NPCI Approval to Onboard New UPI Customers

Nearly nine months after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) imposed a ban on the addition of new customers, One97 Communications (OCL), the firm that runs the Paytm brand, announced on 22 October 2024 that it has been given permission by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to onboard new UPI users. In a letter to Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the founder and CEO of the Noida-based company, NPCI chief Dilip Asbe gave the company permission to start onboarding new users. The NPCI's procedural rules and agreements with Payment Service Provider (PSP) banks govern the permissions.