Brands
TranServ ropes in MasterCard ‘s Salil Mody and MobiKwik’s Ushpinder Singh
MUMBAI: TranServ, a Indian digital payments company, has roped in Salil Mody as SVP corporate strategy and Ushpinder Singh as the SVP and head merchant business. Mody will focus on driving corporate strategy, inorganic growth and innovative initiatives like micro-credits. While Singh will lead the merchants business and will be responsible for sales of the Udio product suite with special focus on API integrations and digital payment solutions of the company.
Speaking on the new appointments, TranServ co-founder and CEO Anish Williams said, “2016 is an important year for us at TranServ. We launched our flagship product Udio, India’s first social wallet, and have been adding interesting features to our Udio product suite for merchants. We have even forayed into the corporate space with expense management solutions, and have also just secured Series C investment from Micromax and IDFC Mutual Funds. We are now aggressively focusing on providing more secure and seamless payment offerings for both our merchants and consumers. By welcoming Salil and Ushpinder, we are looking to leverage their expertise in digital payments to consolidate our leadership position within the Indian market even further. We are confident that their addition will add another dimension to our business strategy and will aid us immensely in our continued growth and success.”
Mody comes with an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and holds a Master’s degree in computer engineering from the University of California. He comes with experience in the payments space with 8 years at PayPal across Silicon Valley and India. Prior to his joining, he was at MasterCard where he was responsible for market development for South Asia.
On the other hand, Singh comes with 16 years of work experience with 6.5 years in the mobile payments space. Prior to TranServ, he was heading partnership and strategic alliances at MobiKwik. Before venturing into mobile payments, he has worked with various CMM L5 technology consulting companies, both in India and US.
TranServ’s current focus is on corporate and business strategies ensuring a healthy balance between sustainability and growth. The company has also forayed into the corporate space through its small value employee payments delivered via the Udio app and is looking to capture 35 percent of the market by the end of the current fiscal. It has been actively trying to create a more integrated, ubiquitous and holistic mobile payments infrastructure within the country through its innovative tech-based solutions.
Brands
Faber-Castell India appoints Sunaina Haldar as director – marketing
With stints at Tata, SleepyCat and ADF Foods under her belt, Haldar is primed to redraw Faber-Castell’s brand story
MUMBAI: Faber-Castell India has poached Sunaina Haldar from ADF Foods, appointing her director – marketing as the German stationery brand looks to muscle up in a category that is rapidly reinventing itself around creativity and self-expression.
Haldar hit the ground running. “My first couple of weeks have been incredibly energising, understanding consumers, visiting markets, engaging with retailers and immersing myself into the world of Faber-Castell Group,” she said.
She arrives with considerable firepower. At ADF Foods, Haldar ran marketing across India and international markets for a portfolio spanning Ashoka, Aeroplane, Camel and ADF Soul. Before that, she was vice-president – marketing at direct-to-consumer mattress brand SleepyCat, where she helmed brand, content and performance marketing. Her résumé also includes a stint leading marketing, new product development and CRM for Tata SmartFoodz at Tata Consumer Products, no small proving ground.
Between corporate roles, Haldar also operated as a fractional CMO for early-stage startups, building marketing strategy and operational structures from scratch, a signal that she knows how to move fast with limited resources.
With 18 years straddling FMCG, D2C and the startup world, Haldar now takes the reins at a brand that has long owned the classroom but is clearly hungry for the living room. In a stationery market where the pencil has become a lifestyle statement, Faber-Castell has picked someone who knows exactly how to sell that story.
