Digital payments company MobiKwik has hired Info Edge's former executive vice president Vineet K Singh as Chief Business Officer. At Info Edge, Singh was Business Head of multiple units including Naukri.com, 99acres, JeevanSaathi.com and NaukriGulf.com. Prior to joining MobiKwik, Singh was the co-founder, CEO and managing director of Buildzar.com. He has more than 16 years of experience in the consumer internet industry. Earlier this month, MobiKwik strengthened its top deck and hired Damandeep Singh Soni as head of Marketing and Growth functions. This hire comes at a time when MobiKwik is looking to add new features to appeal to a wired audience. Just this month the company added 5 new regional languages – Bengali, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Gujarati and Telugu – on the lightweight version of its app. The payments company had started allowing UPI payments from ICICI Bank through its payment gateway aggregator ZaakPay in October 2016 and was looking to start offering loans to users the same month. In March 2016, the wallet launched an ‘Explore Nearby’ feature on its app, which lets users discover neighbourhood stores, restaurants, cafes etc., that accept payments from the company. Funding In August 2016, Net1, a South African payment systems company, invested $40 million in MobiKiwk. In May 2016, the company raised $50 million in a series C round of funding led by Japan’s GMO Payment Gateway and Taiwan’s Mediatek. In April last year, MobiKwik raised ~$25 million in Series B funding led by Tree Line Asia, existing investor Sequoia Capital along with Cisco Investments and American Express.
