Former Nykaa CFO Arvind Agarwal joins PayU India

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Former Nykaa Chief Financial Officer Arvind Agarwal has joined Prosus-owned PayU India as chief financial officer (CFO), days after the beauty e-retailer announced his exit.

Agarwal's move comes two years after he joined Nykaa in July 2020. Nykaa had informed stock exchanges of his exit in a regulatory filing on November 22.

Anirban Mukherjee, CEO – PayU Payments said, "We are pleased to welcome Arvind to our leadership team as we look at accelerating the growth of our integrated digital financial ecosystem. India is the largest market for PayU, and we are witnessing an unprecedented growth in this region."

Commenting on his appointment, Arvind Agarwal, CFO – PayU India Payments said, "I am excited about PayU's vision of creating a full stack digital financial services platform for India. Both PayU and the overall digitization wave in India are at a critical growth juncture, so this is a fantastic prospect for expanding my learnings in digital economy."

The company further said it will continue to fortify its team with leaders that bring deeper knowledge and wider expertise.

Agarwal has over two decades of experience, and before joining Nykaa, he was the FP&A Leader & Business Controller at Amazon India, from August 2017 to June 2020. Prior to that, he was associated with Vodafone India for over five years. Earlier, the industry veteran had also worked with Tata Teleservices, YOU Telecom and Adani Port.

PayU currently offers omnichannel payment solutions to merchants through its payment gateway, Quick Response codes and Point of Sales (PoS) machines. It also enables lending including Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) and personal loans through its lending arm PayU Credit's LazyPay.

The news comes months after Prosus announced its $4.7 billion acquisition of payments gateway BillDesk has been terminated after certain conditions were not met after the long stop date of September 30, 2022.

India is the largest market for Prosus' payments and financial services vertical and saw a 38 percent growth in revenues to $183 million in the first half of FY23, according to filings by the Dutch investment group.

While commenting on his decision to resign from Nykaa, Agarwal said, "I wish Nykaa the very best for the growth path ahead and will always be a part of the Nykaa family."

Nykaa founder and chairperson Falguni Nayar had credited Agarwal for the "critical role" he has played in the company’s emergence as a listed and profitable start-up. "While we do regret losing him, we are conscious of his personal dreams, and wish him all the luck," she said.