Neeraj Arora Rejoins Paytm Board Ahead Of Its IPO

• ByAyushi Ray     |    July 13, 2021

Neeraj Arora, the former executive of Facebook-owned Whatsapp, has been appointed as an additional director to the board of IPO-bound One 97 Communications that owns and operates online payments firm Paytm, according to the registrar of companies filings accessed by Moneycontrol. Arora was associated with WhatsApp from 2011-2018. While being at Whatsapp, Arora also served as the board member of Paytm. According to his LinkedIn profile, he was with Paytm from 2015 to 2018. According to media reports, Arora had quit Paytm’s board in 2018, soon after Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma had criticised WhatsApp UPI payments model on micro-blogging site Twitter. That same year, he also quit WhatsApp. Besides Arora, Mukul Arora who is a partner at Elevation Capital, one of the early investors of the company, has also resigned from the company’s board of directors.

He will be replaced by Vivek Mathur, who has been appointed as an alternate director on Paytm’s board. Last week too the company rejigged its board which led to the exit of Jing Xiandong of Ant Group. He was replaced by Douglas Lehman Feagin, the senior vice president of Ant Group who is based out of the US. It also appointed Ash Lilani, managing partner of Saama Capital as an independent director. The company, on July 12, received approval from its shareholders at an extraordinary general meeting to raise Rs 12,000 crore through a fresh issue of shares, paving way for one of India’s largest initial public offerings (IPO) in recent times. 

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