MC Exclusive | BharatPe's Rajnish Kumar denies leadership crisis, looks for fresh talent

Rajnish Kumar, Chairman, BharatPe

BharatPe Board Chairman Rajnish Kumar on January 5 denied any leadership crisis in the company, saying the firm is attracting fresh talent despite a series of senior-level exits in the past year.

“Crisis happens only in weak companies. There is no leadership crisis in BharatPe. We are attracting new talent,” Kumar said in an exclusive interview with Moneycontrol as part of the Banking Central interview series.

Watch the full interview here

Kumar said the Executive search firm appointed to look for new chief executive officer (CEO) after the exit of Suhail Sameer has received a lot of interest from applicants. On January 3, CEO Suhail Sameer stepped down, following a series of other senior level exits in the company.

The CEO-search firm will submit its proposals after shortlisting from the list of applicants post which the Board will appoint the new CEO, Kumar said.

Top-level exits

Four of the company's senior executives have left to pursue their entrepreneurial interests since the beginning of 2022, including chief technology officer Vijay Aggarwal, chief product officer for lending and consumer products Rajat Jain, and Nehul Malhotra, head of consumer lending platform PostPe.

Geetanshu Singla, who served as the vice-president of technology, too has moved on.

The exits came in a year when Tiger Global and Sequoia-backed BharatPe saw the controversial exit of founder Ashneer Grover. Grover’s exit was followed by co-founder Bhavik Koladia leaving the company in April.

These fresh exits also come at a time when the startup was building Unity Small Finance Bank, formerly PMC Bank, which was acquired through a joint venture between BharatPe and Centrum Financial Services.

The four-year-old company has been embroiled in controversy since the beginning of 2022, when founder Ashneer Grover was accused of using inappropriate language and threatening a Kotak Group employee for failing to secure an allotment and funding for the Nykaa IPO for himself and his wife Madhuri Jain Grover.

Kotak Group in a statement on January 9 said that it has placed on record its objections to inappropriate language used by BharatPe co-founder and MD Ashneer Grover against a Group employee.

Grover and Madhuri Jain Grover were then ousted from the company over allegations of misappropriation of funds.

Kumar, earlier worked as the chairman of India’s largest bank State Bank of India (SBI), joined BharatPe in October, 2021 as Non-executive chairman of the company.

An industry veteran, Kumar was the SBI chairman from October 2017 to October 2020. He has also served as the managing director, and the managing director (Compliance and Risk) of SBI.