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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.
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UK’s OnlyFans seeks US investor at $3bn valuation after owner’s death
The adult video platform is seeking stability after the death of its billionaire owner
LONDON: OnlyFans is looking for a new partner. The London-based adult video platform is in advanced talks to sell a minority stake of less than 20 per cent to Architect Capital, a San Francisco-based investment firm, in a deal that would value the business at more than $3bn (£2.2bn).
The move is driven by an urgent need for stability. Leonid Radvinsky, the Ukrainian-American billionaire who owned OnlyFans, died of cancer last month at the age of 43, leaving the future of one of Britain’s most profitable privately held businesses suddenly uncertain.
The choice of Architect Capital is not arbitrary. The firm has deep expertise in financial services, which aligns neatly with OnlyFans’ ambitions to offer banking products to its creators, many of whom have long struggled to access basic financial services because of the nature of their work.
The numbers behind OnlyFans are, by any measure, staggering. The platform posted revenues of $1.4bn in the year to 30th November 2024, with a pre-tax profit of $684m, up four per cent on the prior year. Payments to creators totalled $7.2bn over the same period, a rise of nearly ten per cent. Radvinsky personally collected $701m in dividends from the business in 2024 alone, on top of more than $1bn in such payments he had already received. The platform, run through its parent company Felix International, hosts 4.6m creator accounts, with performers keeping 80 per cent of subscription proceeds and the platform pocketing the remaining 20 per cent. It has 377m fan accounts in total.
The current minority stake talks represent a notable scaling back of ambitions. In January, OnlyFans was reported to be in discussions with Architect about selling a majority stake of 60 per cent. Before that, the company had explored a sale to a consortium led by Forest Road Company, a Los Angeles-based investment firm. Neither deal materialised.
OnlyFans has built an enormously lucrative business on content that mainstream finance has long refused to touch. Now, with its owner gone and a $3bn valuation on the table, it is looking for the kind of respectable institutional backing that might finally persuade the banks to take its calls.
