MAM
Pepperfry appoints Nishant Kumar as vice president & national head of studios
Mumbai: E-commerce furniture and home goods company Pepperfry announced the appointment of Nishant Kumar as the vice president & national head of studios. Kumar will be spearheading the expansion of Pepperfry’s studio footprint across the country. His appointment is effective immediately and he will be based at the company’s office in Mumbai.
Kumar comes to Pepperfry with 21 years of experience working in sales, business strategies, financial planning, operations, and zonal planning. In his previous stint with Vodafone-Idea, Kumar was managing an ecosystem of 2700 retail stores. At Pepperfry all studio regional managers will now report to Kumar.
He is a postgraduate in marketing from Welingkar Institute of Management and holds a bachelor’s degree in hospitality management from IHMCTAN, Kolkata.
On the appointment, Pepperfry co-founder & COO Ashish Shah said, “Nishant joins the team with vast experience in managing a large footprint of retail stores and has an impressive track record of leading businesses during a hyper-expansion phase. With his expertise, we aim to strengthen our omnichannel capabilities for our customers and provide them with a visual, highly engaging, and interactive shopping experience. It gives me great delight to welcome him, and l am looking forward to work with him in transforming the furniture retail landscape in India.”
On his new role, Kumar said, “I am delighted to join Pepperfry and super enthusiastic to be a part of the company’s mission – To spark a feeling called home across the world. I look forward to making significant contributions in charting a high growth path for the stellar Studio business at Pepperfry.”
Omnichannel is a very big strategy for the brand and Pepperfry Studios are a key consumer touchpoint. Pepperfry Studios operate in two formats – COCO (company owned and company operated) and FOFO (Franchise owned and Franchise operated), and are located at prominent locations across respective cities. The company has a good omnichannel footprint in India with 180+ studios in 90+ cities.
Brands
Reserve Bank of India cancels Paytm Payments Bank licence
Central bank cites compliance failures; curbs tighten as wind-up looms
MUMBAI: India’s banking watchdog delivered its sharpest blow yet to Paytm Payments Bank, cancelling its licence and effectively ending its ability to operate as a bank under the law.
The Reserve Bank of India said the entity can no longer conduct banking business under the Banking Regulation Act, citing concerns that its affairs were not being run in the interest of depositors or the public and that it had failed to meet licence conditions.
The move escalates a crackdown that has been building for months. The bank had already been barred from onboarding new customers since March 11, 2022, and later faced restrictions on deposits, credit and wallet top-ups. In January 2024, the central bank ordered it to stop accepting fresh deposits, pointing to persistent non-compliance, including lapses in customer due diligence, use of funds and technology systems.
Operationally, the bank is now on a tight leash. It may process withdrawals of existing deposits and facilitate loan referrals through banking correspondents, but it cannot take fresh deposits.
The central bank said it would apply to the high court to wind up the bank.
Paytm sought to ringfence the fallout. In a regulatory filing, it said the licence cancellation applies to Paytm Payments Bank Limited, a separate entity, and should not be attributed to One 97 Communications. It added that there is no exposure or material business arrangement with the bank and that it operates independently, without Paytm’s board or management involvement.
“As informed earlier, Paytm (One 97 Communications Limited) and its services, which have been operating without interruption, will continue to operate uninterrupted. These include the Paytm app, Paytm UPI, Paytm Gold and all other services offered by its subsidiaries and associated companies,” the company said.
The distinction may reassure users of the app ecosystem, but the regulator’s verdict is unequivocal. After years of warnings, caps and curbs, the payments bank experiment at Paytm is being shut down—decisively, and with little room left to manoeuvre.
