PayU Payments appoints former PayU global CEO Laurent Le Moal, HDFC chief Renu Sud Karnad to board

(Left to right: Arvind Agarwal, Laurent Le Moal, Jan Bune, Gopika Pant, Renu Sud Karnad, Jairaj Purandare, Anirban Mukherjee

Prosus-owned PayU Payments has appointed five members to its board of directors. The include former managing director (MD) of Housing Development Finance Corporation Ltd (HDFC) Renu Sud Karnad and former global chief executive officer of PayU group Laurent Le Moal.

The PayU Payments board's strength has reached seven with existing members CEO Anirban Mukherjee and Chief Finance Officer Arvind Agarwal.

Karnad, who is appointed as chairperson of the board, is joined by two independent directors - Gopika Pant, managing partner at Indian Law Partners, and Jairaj Purandare, founder and chairman of JMP Advisors Pvt Ltd.

Former global CEO of PayU group, Laurent Le Moal, and Jan Bune, former partner at Deloitte Netherlands, have come in as the non-executive directors.

Mukherjee had replaced Moal as the PayU global CEO last October, after he stepped back from the operational management of the day-to-day business.

"We're delighted to have built an outstanding board to offer us counsel and guidance as we build full stack of digital financial services to serve India, advance digitisation and drive financial inclusion. With the Indian economy undergoing rapid transformation, PayU is poised to capitalise on leveraging the unparalleled online payments opportunity as India aims to be a $1-trillion internet economy by 2030," Mukherjee said.

“I'm especially pleased that Renu Sud Karnad has agreed to join our Board. With a strong background in financial services, gained from her illustrious career, Renu will bring the skills and experience required to make a material contribution to PayU’s future,” he added.

Karnad also serves as the president of the International Union of Housing Finance (IUHF) and as chairperson of the board of GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals Limited.

Moneycontrol has previously reported the leadership changes at PayU's NBFC credit arm, PayU Finance. The firm has elevated its chief risk officer (CRO) Deepak Mendiratta as the CEO while former DBS Bank chief Manish Kulkarni had taken over as the CFO of the subsidiary.

PayU Payments, which provide payment gateway solutions to online businesses, claims to have clientele of over 5 lakh businesses, including  enterprises, e-commerce players and SMBs.

In FY23, PayU India, which looks to double down on its India business and a potential listing, reported a revenue of $400 million, a growth of 31 percent from the previous fiscal.

While the results for FY24 are awaited, its revenue from core payments business rose 15 percent to $211 million in the first half of the year.

This largely came from the existing merchants and payment processing stack Wibmo and its omnichannel business, with onboarding to new merchants remain paused.

The company said it is closely working with the authorities (RBI) on its reapplication for the payment aggregator licence and expects a resolution soon.