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Akasa Air co-founder Praveen Iyer steps down, Anand Srinivasan to lead
Airline shakes up top team as Iyer exits and leadership reshuffles take flight
MUMBAI: Akasa Air has announced that co-founder and chief commercial officer Praveen Iyer is set to resign, marking another shake-up at the fast-growing carrier. Iyer, part of the founding team that launched flights in August 2022, will work closely with the leadership team to ensure a smooth transition until 30 April 2026.
Following his departure, co-founder and chief information officer Anand Srinivasan will take over as chief commercial officer, while the airline’s IT function will now report to chief financial officer Ankur Goel.
Iyer’s exit adds to a string of senior-level departures at Akasa over the past nine months. In October 2025, co-founder and senior vice president for International Operations Neelu Khatri stepped down. Other key exits in the latter half of 2025 included Rishabh Dev, head of long-term operations, strategy, excellence and planning; Anmol Mane, vice president – aircraft acquisition and leasing; and Vineet Mishra, deputy general manager for catering.
Despite the revolving door at the top, Akasa Air continues to push ahead, navigating turbulence with new appointments and leadership reshuffles aimed at keeping the airline on a steady flight path.
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Rakesh Menon joins Paytm as avp – lending
Fintech product leader takes on new role after building digital lending, payments and credit products across fintech ecosystem
MUMBAI: Rakesh Menon has joined Paytm as assistant vice president – lending, taking on a new role focused on strengthening the company’s lending and credit products.
Prior to this, Menon worked at Profectus Capital Pvt Ltd as chief manager – payments based financing and digital lending.
At Profectus, he designed and launched digital credit products for merchants with variable cash flows, including overdraft-linked and revenue-share lending models. He led end-to-end LOS–LMS API integrations with payment partners and aggregators, enabling real-time underwriting, disbursal and repayment workflows.
He also worked on funnel optimisation initiatives using journey analytics, improving onboarding, KYC and disbursal conversion by 35 per cent. He developed ecosystem partnerships for transaction-data-based credit assessment and automated settlement systems, and collaborated with credit and data science teams to strengthen risk models and early delinquency detection.
Menon standardised partner onboarding and API frameworks, reducing go-live timelines by 40 per cent and improving digital scalability.
Before Profectus Capital, he worked at PayU as senior manager – presales lead – enterprise business from August 2022 to August 2023. He set up a national presales function for fintech and digital commerce clients, aligning solutions such as EMI, BNPL, BBPS and offer engines to merchant requirements.
He also helped improve conversion rates by around 15 per cent through merchant persona mapping, demo frameworks and structured sales playbooks, working closely with product and go-to-market teams.
From April 2019 to July 2022, Menon served as business unit head – SMB – direct acquisitions at Worldline, where he built the SMB online payments vertical from scratch. The business scaled to Rs 2,500 crore in annual transaction volume, growing at 45 per cent year-on-year.
During this period, he introduced paperless onboarding processes including eKYC and eSign, developed partner dashboards and CRM automation systems, and integrated platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce and Tally to expand merchant adoption.
Across roles, Menon has worked across digital lending, payments and merchant financing, with experience in product development, ecosystem partnerships, API integrations and fintech-led growth strategies.
At Paytm, he will focus on scaling lending products and strengthening digital credit infrastructure within the company’s financial services ecosystem.
His appointment comes as fintech firms continue to expand their lending and embedded finance offerings in a competitive market.
