One 97 Communications’ regulatory affairs and policy head Srinivas Yanamandra has put down his papers, three sources aware of the development told The Head and Tale.

Paytm, which has been grappling with regulatory and compliance challenges on multiple fronts, “has accepted his resignation,” one of the sources confirmed. “However he has been asked to stay until a replacement is found,” the source added without explaining the reason for his exit.

However, another source informed that Srinivas was "asked to resign due to the compliance issues the company faced."

Responding to The Head and Tale query on Yanamandra's exit, a Paytm spokesperson said, "We would like to share that the information you’ve mentioned is incorrect, and there are no such developments to confirm." 

Soon after, Yanamandra also responded to our LinkedIn query. He said, "The statement is not correct. I am still with Paytm."

Yanamandra was appointed as Paytm’s group head – regulatory affairs and policy – in 2022.  He joined Paytm from the New Development Bank in Shanghai, where he served as chief of the compliance division.

Prior to that, he worked as a compliance professional at ICICI Bank and IDFC First Bank in Mumbai, focusing on various aspects of banking regulation including governance, risk management, prudential reporting, risk-based supervision and digital banking. 

Yanamandra – who was on the Paytm Payments Bank board as a director since November 2023 – now no longer appears as one of the board members, as per the payments bank website. However, he still shows up as a non-executive director on the Paytm Money website.

He is also on the board of Paytm Payments Services, an entity through which Paytm has applied for a payment aggregator license.

Notably, it has been more than a year now since Paytm’s payments aggregator business – which accounted for a quarter of the company’s consolidated revenue in the financial year ended March 2023 – has been barred from onboarding new merchants.

Yanamandra’s resignation comes at a time when the Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led company has been struggling since its associate entity Paytm Payments Bank was barred by the Reserve Bank of India earlier this year due to severe regulatory lapses. Paytm’s shares have tanked since then.

The crisis-hit Paytm has seen several board members and senior officials quitting the firm over the last couple of months. Paytm’s chief operating officer Bhavesh Gupta and Paytm Payments Bank CEO Surinder Chawla, among others, resigned recently.

Paytm Payments Bank’s board also saw two exits over the past few months. Shinjini Kumar, a former Bank of America and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) executive, resigned from the payments bank’s board in December. However, she attended two meetings as a special invitee even after stepping down. Kumar’s resignation was accepted and a replacement was being finalised.

Former deputy managing director at SBI, Manju Agarwal, was another independent director who resigned from the payments bank board.