MAM
MobiKwik elevates Chandan Joshi as co-founder & CEO of payments business
NEW DELHI: Fintech platform MobiKwik has promoted Chandan Joshi as the company’s co-founder and CEO, payments business.
Joshi has been part of the MobiKwik leadership team for the last 2.5 years as senior vice president, payments, managing all the payment businesses of the company. This is the first time the company has bestowed the co-founder title on anyone outside the original founding team.
Chandan is now the third co-Founder of MobiKwik in addition to Bipin Preet Singh and Upasana Taku. With this appointment, the fintech platform has kick started its IPO 2022 campaign.
As CEO payments business, Chandan he will take on complete ownership of the company’s flagship payments business which drives 75 per cent of the revenues. While he was already driving the business (sales, marketing, product, engineering) in his existing role, all functions in the Payments BU will now report into him.
Joshi said, “My journey with MobiKwik so far has been very fulfilling – I joined in the aftermath of Demonetization and my first assignment was organizing the retail payments business, then to run eCommerce payments and finally to grow all of the Payments business. The team and culture at MobiKwik have been a good fit for me. I share a good rapport with Upasana and Bipin and share their vision of delivering on the Digital Credit Card opportunity. I am confident that together we will be able to profitably grow MobiKwik and take the company public.”
Singh says, “It has been fantastic seeing Chandan build the Payments Business for the past 2 years with amazing zeal and conviction.
Chandan has demonstrated all the right traits that we look for in a business leader – he leads from the front, is invested in his teams, is tenacious in driving business results and in closing large strategic deals. He has been a strong growth driver for MobiKwik and we want him to partner with us as a co-founder in the overall build-out of the company.”
Chandan’s professional journey so far has prepared him well for his role at MobiKwik. Chandan returned to India in 2015 and founded Paketts, an innovative last mile logistics service company. He successfully exited the business after Paketts was acquired by Nuvo Logistics (Peppertap) in 2017. Prior to being an entrepreneur, Chandan was a financial trader in global financial markets with Credit Suisse in London & Hong Kong. Chandan did his Engineering from IIT Delhi and his MBA from London Business School.
MobiKwik has reported strong financial results: net revenue growth of 133 per cent year over year to Rs 379 crores and cash EBITDA loss reduction of 91 per cent year over year to Rs 8.5 crores. In the report, the brand has spoken passionately about fulfilling a Billion Indian Dreams by making an everlasting impact on Bharat with our digital payment and fintech products. Having delivered three straight years of greater than 100 per cent revenue growth amid stiff competition, MobiKwik claims to have demonstrated strong execution and financial discipline.
Brands
Estée Lauder to shed 10,000 jobs as new boss bets on digital shift
The cosmetics giant raises its profit outlook but stays silent on a possible merger with Spain’s Puig, as job cuts deepen and a three-year sales slump weighs on the turnaround
NEW YORK: Stéphane de La Faverie is not done cutting. Estée Lauder announced on Friday that it plans to eliminate as many as 3,000 additional jobs, taking its total redundancy programme to as many as 10,000 roles, up from a previous target of 7,000 announced a year ago. The company, which owns La Mer, The Ordinary, Tom Ford, and Aveda, employs roughly 57,000 people worldwide. The mathematics of what is now being contemplated is stark.
The fresh round of cuts is expected to generate a further $200 million in savings, bringing the total annual savings from the programme to as much as $1.2 billion before taxes. That money, De La Faverie has made clear, will be ploughed back into the turnaround.
A CEO in a hurry
De La Faverie, who took the helm in January 2025, inherited a company that had endured three consecutive years of annual sales declines. His response has been to move fast and cut deep. A significant portion of the latest redundancies reflects his push to reduce headcount at US department stores, long a cornerstone of Estée Lauder’s distribution model but now a channel in structural decline. In their place, he is accelerating the shift toward faster-growing online platforms, including Amazon.com and TikTok Shop, a pivot that is reshaping not just where Estée Lauder sells but how it thinks about its customers.
The numbers are moving in the right direction
Despite the pain, there are signs the medicine is working. Estée Lauder raised its profit outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year, guiding for adjusted earnings per share in the range of $2.35 to $2.45, above analyst estimates and a notable step up from the $2.05 to $2.25 range it had guided for in February. Organic net sales growth is expected to come in at 3 per cent, the company said, at the high end of the range it set out in February.
The share price tells a mixed story. After De La Faverie took charge, the stock surged nearly 60 per cent, buoyed by investor optimism that a longtime company insider could finally arrest the decline. But 2026 has been rougher: the shares have fallen 27 per cent this year, weighed down by disappointing February results and the overhang of unresolved merger talks with Spanish beauty giant Puig Brands SA. The company gave no additional details about those discussions on Friday, leaving the market to guess.
Silence on Puig
The proposed tie-up with Puig remains the most consequential unknown hanging over Estée Lauder. A deal with the Barcelona-based group, which owns brands including Carolina Herrera and Rabanne, would reshape the global luxury beauty landscape. But with nothing new to say and a turnaround still very much in progress, De La Faverie is asking investors to trust the process.
Three years of sales declines, 10,000 job cuts, and a merger that may or may not happen. At Estée Lauder, the overhaul has barely started.
