Sudhir Sehgal, chief business officer at PayU, has resigned, three people confirmed to The Head and Tale.

After the publication of this story, we learned that Sehgal announced his departure during a team townhall.

His exit adds to a series of high-profile leadership exits at PayU over last couple of months. The Head and Tale has been exclusively reporting these exits and developments at PayU since last few months.

A email query sent to PayU, and a message sent to Sudhir Sehgal via LinkedIn seeking comment remain unanswered. We will update the story once the responses are in.

Sehgal joined the Gurugram-based payments company in 2020. He joined as the country head to lead PayU’s enterprise business. With over two decades of experience, his last stint was with HDFC bank as senior vice-president.

A source familiar with the development told The Head and Tale, "Sudhir was managing about 65% of the business at PayU. After his exit, critical verticals will move to Hemang Dattani, Vineet Sethi, and Nikhil Mehta."

"Sehgal was handling 80% of PayU's business, including enterprise, international, BBPS, government, marketing, part of SMD, new acquisitions, banking products, banking alliances, and schemes," another source claimed.

As for the takeover of Sehgal's responsibilities, Sethi will oversee SMBs, startups, and most likely government verticals; while three to four verticals, including partnerships, will come under Mehta, a third source confirmed.

Dattani is currently the COO and head of data at PayU; Sethi is senior vice president-diversified financial services; Mehta is SVP-partnerships and payments strategy. 

Leadership churn at PayU

In November, The Head and Tale exclusively reported the exit of another top official at PayU -- Vijay Agicha, chief investment and transformation officer at PayU, resigned from the company.

In October, we were also the first one to report about the exit of Wibmo CEO Suresh Rajagopalan.

The leadership transitions come as PayU’s long-anticipated IPO appears to be facing delays. Initially expected by the end of 2024, Prosus now targets 2025 for PayU’s listing. Speaking on a media call earlier this month, Prosus CIO Ervin Tu said, “It’s currently not on that path. We’re late into 2024 already, but we hope that it could be a 2025 event.”

The uncertainty surrounding the IPO comes despite Prosus’s public optimism following Swiggy’s recent successful listing.

One source had then noted that Bloisi, who took over as CEO in July, was dissatisfied with PayU India’s FY24 performance during his visit recently. “The India business has failed to improve profitability, and the pressure to deliver results has intensified. They are cutting costs in areas that aren’t generating returns,” he earlier told The Head and Tale.

Also in October, we reported on layoffs at PayU Finance, the non-banking financial company (NBFC) arm of PayU, where nearly 100 employees from the lending unit were let go. In addition to the layoffs, we also reported several senior-level exits at PayU in recent months.

According to Prosus’ annual report, its revenue from India – the largest market in PayU’s payment service provider (PSP) business – grew 11% to $444 million in FY24 despite being unable to onboard new merchants due to the noted embargo during the year. Revenue growth was driven by increasing volumes from existing merchants and growing value-added services such as affordability, it added. However, while its payments business in India achieved a 3% trading profit margin in FY23, this worsened to -3% in FY24 due to the change in merchant and payment method mix, it noted.

It added that it has continued investing and building new opportunities such as credit in India. "The credit business revenue has grown 12x since FY21, translating into a revenue CAGR of over 128%. This growth has been coupled with cost reductions, ensuring that the trading-loss margin continued to improve YoY," it explained.