Subeer Bakshi, the talent head of fintech behemoth PhonePe, has left the company to join audio entertainment startup Pocket FM. Bakshi will lead Pocket FM’s “People & Culture” division, the company announced in a statement.
“Subeer is a valuable addition to our leadership team due to his extensive background in the people function, building culture, and his track record of building strong, collaborative teams,” stated Pocket FM founder and CEO Rohan Nayak.
He went on, “We are convinced that his experience will further solidify our dedication to developing an enabling culture and help Pocket FM become an employer of choice.”
Prior to joining Pocket FM, Bakshi worked from February 2022 until December 2023 as the head of talent strategy at PhonePe, a Walmart group company.
According to the release, Bakshi will lead Pocket FM in developing the people, process, and culture anchors that will support the company’s explosive development.
“I’m thrilled to be a part of Pocket FM’s rocketship. Building on the foundation of an already outstanding team, I look forward to helping the company grow by coordinating people’s practices with its particular business needs as it expands globally, added Bakshi.
Furthermore, PhonePe is expanding its position in online commerce after developing a full-stack payments solution for e-commerce platforms and receiving in-principle approval for the payment aggregator business from the Reserve Bank of India.
E-commerce is the next aim for the Walmart-backed startup, which has about 500 million registered customers who use the Unified Payments Interface for payments and 37 million offline shops who use QR codes.
PhonePe is already being used by gaming sites like Dream11 and MPL, hotel chain Oyo, and railway ticketing portal IRCTC. Large ecommerce companies, gaming startups, and direct-to-consumer brands—or, as it refers to them internally, “new generation ecommerce players”—are typically its targets.
With the RBI forbidding existing competitors in the online arena, such as Razorpay, PayU, Paytm, and Cashfree, from accepting new users, PhonePe now has a significant potential.
PhonePe used to provide its consumers with UPI-based checkout on a few e-commerce platforms, but these days the company wants to accept all payment methods, including cards, UPI, wallets, and net banking.
The business also provides its enterprise merchants with a fraud-detection solution called Guardian and a fast checkout process called Express for verified online buyers.
