Paytm's senior leadership met employees in a virtual town hall to reassure and address their concerns about the future of the company. Sources told Economic Times that the top management held two town hall meetings with senior business leaders at
Paytm
Payments Bank and One97 Communications. “Conversations were mostly to rebut multiple theories going around and on the future course of action; the company is still waiting for regulator nod to initiate the next step of shifting backend bank accounts,” said one of the executives cited above.
No job cuts
In his first direct communication with employees, Paytm founder
Vijay Shekhar Sharma
sought to pacify employees' fears around job security.
“You are a part of the Paytm family, and there is nothing to worry about. Many banks are helping us,” Sharma said during a virtual town hall with employees of Paytm Payment Bank Ltd (PPBL) on Saturday.
Sharma was joined by company's President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) Bhavesh Gupta, and CEO of PPBL, Surinder Chawla.
“We are not completely sure of things…like what exactly went wrong. But we will figure out everything soon. We will reach out to the RBI to see what can be done,” the founder said while addressing about 800-900 employees on the call that went on for almost an hour.
On January 31, the RBI asked Paytm Payments Bank to stop offering basic banking services from February-end. Responding to the regulator's action, One97 Communications, which runs the Paytm application, said it will transfer the business from the payments bank to two or three other lenders.
Work towards new business model
“As a bank we had greater control over the payments journey, but as a third-party app, the challenge will be to ensure transaction success,” a second executive said. “Our priority now is to ensure our users are not inconvenienced,” he added.
“It is a change in business model for us; from being a bank, we will become a third-party payments app, so that will mean a bunch of changes in the backend and the time that we have is limited,” the first executive said.
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