Paytm payments bank to be headed by former RBI and PwC executive Shinjini Kumar

Shinjini Kumar, a former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) executive director, is all set to join Paytm's payments bank as the CEO, multiple sources with direct knowledge of the matter told TOI. In the past, Kumar has also had a stint at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

She is expected to join Paytm in March, as the company gets ready to start its payments bank operations after June this year. While they had earlier planned to start operations in the first quarter, there has been some delay in the operation.

The Noida-headquartered company is looking for fresh capital and discussions with investors are said to be at an early stage.

At PwC Mumbai, Kumar led the banking, capital market and financial services regulatory practice for 5 years. It was in 2010 that she had quit Bank of America's investment division, where she was heading the India compliance, managing regulatory and compliance risk across product lines, including corporate and investment banking, global markets, equities and private banking.

Paytm is funded by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, and is one of the 11 entities to have got a license from the RBI to establish a payments bank. The list also includes Reliance Industries, Aditya Birla Group, Airtel and Vodafone.

To make the launch a grand and successful affair, Paytm has been making key senior-level appointments from companies like Amazon, Airtel and ITC. Presently, it is in the process of hiring about 3,000 people for handling the operation of its payments bank.

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