e-commerce
Paytm ranked among Top 50 global companies
MUMBAI: India’s largest mobile payments platform Paytm’s instrumental role towards pioneering the cashless economy has been honored in American business magazine Fast Company’s annual ranking of the world’s ‘50 Most Innovative Companies’ for 2018. The company is among the only two Indian companies that has joined the list of other leading global companies such as Netflix, Tencent and SpaceX.
Most Innovative Companies is one of Fast Company’s most significant and highly anticipated editorial efforts of the year. To produce the 2018 list, more than three dozen Fast Company editors, reporters, and contributors surveyed thousands of enterprises across the globe to identify the most notable innovations of the year and trace the impact of those initiatives on business and industry.
Paytm has played a key role in making payments easy for Indians. It has pioneered QR based mobile payments in the country and supports all payment methods including Credit/Debit Cards, Net Banking, Paytm BHIM UPI and the Paytm Wallet. It offers customers the widest range of offline and in-store payment use-cases among others. Today the company’s widely accepted QR is enabling merchant partners across India to accept unlimited payments directly into their bank accounts at 0% fee. It is also fast emerging as the largest platform for UPI payments in India.
e-commerce
ONDC names Vibhor Jain MD and CEO; Rohit Lohia joins as CBO, Manoj Thakur as CTO
Leadership formalised as open commerce network sharpens focus on scale and user value
The Open Network for Digital Commerce has formalised Vibhor Jain as managing director and chief executive officer, cementing a leadership transition at India’s ambitious open commerce platform as it pushes for scale and relevance.
Jain, who had been serving as acting chief executive officer since April last year following the exit of Thampy Koshy, steps into the role with effect from 7th April , according to a report by The Economic Times. He previously served as chief operating officer at the government-backed network, which enables buyers and sellers to transact across applications through an open, interoperable system.
Setting out his strategy, Jain underscored the network’s differentiated architecture. “Going forward, we are concentrating on what open, interoperable infrastructure can uniquely enable, things that no single platform has the incentive or the architecture to do,” he said.
He added that the immediate priority is to widen ONDC’s impact across user cohorts often underserved by platform-led commerce. “My priority is to deepen the value ONDC creates for the people it exists to serve: kisaans, karigars, kiranas, gig workers, first-time investors, and daily commuters across India,” he said.
Jain also flagged leadership reinforcement within the organisation, noting that ONDC has “a strong and exciting leadership team in place”, with Rohit Lohia joining as chief business officer and Manoj Thakur as chief technology officer.
With over 18 years of experience spanning entrepreneurship and consulting, Jain brings a track record in technology-led, large-scale transformation programmes and internet businesses. At ONDC, he has been closely involved in shaping strategy and operations as the network seeks to move digital commerce away from platform-centric models towards an open network approach.
Before ONDC, Jain worked with JUMO, where he helped set up the fintech firm’s India operations, and led the India launch of Mobike, handling regulatory, policy and operational aspects of its market entry. Earlier, he co-founded Atlanta Healthcare, an air quality management company, and spent more than a decade in consulting roles at Andersen and EY, advising governments on public policy and technology-driven reforms, including work on the Aadhaar programme and tax systems.
The mandate is clear but the path is complex. As ONDC attempts to rewrite the rules of digital commerce, Jain now carries the burden of turning open architecture into mass adoption, in a market still dominated by platform power.
