Merchant-focused fintech, BharatPe, on Wednesday announced the appointment of Amit Jain as its chief risk officer.
Jain is the third senior addition to BharatPe’s leadership team this year. It had also roped in former chief executive of loyalty platform Payback, Gautam Kaushik, to lead its payments business, and appointed former partner at Amarchand Mangaldas, Sumeet Singh, as the company’s general counsel and head of corporate strategy.
In his new role, Jain will be reporting to BharatPe co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Ashneer Grover and group president Suhail Sameer.
With over 17 years of experience in portfolio and credit risk management in his previous role, Jain was the chief risk officer for consumer lending at Bajaj Finance.
During his nine-year stint, Jain held multiple roles, including managing risk for personal loans, consumer lending, credit card, and as business head for the equated monthly instalments (EMI) cards portfolio.
Prior to Bajaj Finance, Amit held a senior role at SBI Cards in their risk and credit policy team.
“Talent at BharatPe is an amalgamation of Grade A operators with industry experience and passion to do things differently. Amit Jain joining us from Bajaj is a great validation for our lending business model and sets us up for building a high-quality book at scale. I look forward to working closely with Amit to build a differentiated lending team and business with a wider set of products for our merchants,” said BharatPe co-founder and CEO Grover.
In February, BharatPe had raised close to $108 million in series D primary and secondary equity funding led by existing investor New York-headquartered hedge fund Coatue Management at a valuation of $900 million.
The company has been actively focusing on providing working capital credit to its merchant partners.
The company also plans to enter the secured loans segment this year and provide merchants with loans against gold and property, as well as diversify into newer segments such as automobile loans.
These are exciting times in the digital lending industry, and I look forward to working with this incredible team at BharatPe and serving the credit needs of millions of unbanked and underserved merchants in the country. I believe, with my experience of leading risk and credit for several products in great institutions such as Bajaj Finance, I would be able to make a meaningful impact at BharatPe, and therefore, in the lives of our merchants,” added Jain.
At present, BharatPe disburses close to $500 million in credit to merchants on an annual basis.
This article was first published on livemint.com