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Sridhar, its CEO since 2020, has been moved to a different role within the group, one of the people said.
Singh, who was the CEO of broking services at PayU-backed Fisdom, joined Paytm Money last month, this person said.
"The company has made an internal announcement that Varun will be transitioned into a different role within the group...his move is yet to be finalised. Rakesh left Fisdom in March, and joined Paytm Money last month," another person said.
Prior to Fisdom, Singh had worked with financial services companies including Standard Chartered, HDFC Securities and ICICI Bank.
Under Sridhar, Paytm Money, which competes with the likes of Zerodha, Groww, Upstox, Angel One and ET Money, became profitable. The wealthtech platform closed FY23 with a net profit of Rs 42.8 crore on revenue of Rs 132.8 crore.
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ET Money is a part of Times Internet, the digital arm of The Times of India Group which also publishes The Economic Times.
Paytm did not comment on the development.
On Thursday, shares of One 97 Communications ended trading 0.2% lower at Rs 371.60 on the BSE.
The stock and mutual fund broking arm of Paytm recently saw another senior appointment. In February, ET reported that Paytm Money appointed Vipul Mewada as its chief financial officer. Mewada was earlier deputy CFO at ICICI Securities.
The digital wealth management segment has seen a churn in the top decks in recent months. ET reported on January 15 that at least four top executives of Kotak Cherry, the digital wealth management app run by Kotak Mahindra Bank, including its chief executive Srikanth Subramanian, were expected to join rival broking firm Angel One. They have since joined Angel One.
Bengaluru-based Paytm Money focuses on stock and mutual fund investments, and is a major player in the direct mutual funds space, where schemes are offered without the involvement of a third-party distributor.
In January, during the quarterly earnings call, One 97 Communications president and chief operating officer Bhavesh Gupta told analysts that Paytm Money could “become meaningful in the next 12 to 18 months as a part of (Paytm’s) financial services revenue”.
However, Paytm Money has lagged its rivals in the stockbroking sweepstakes. According to data from the National Stock Exchange, Paytm Money’s active trading client base as of March 31 was 802,146. Its biggest rival, Groww, has over 9.5 million clients, while Zerodha’s user base is 7.3 million. Among others, Angel One has 6.1 million clients, while Tiger Global-backed Upstox has more than 2.5 million.
The competitive stock broking and mutual fund distribution space is further expected to heat up with Reliance’s Jio Financial Services also entering the wealth management and broking segment in a joint-venture with US-based BlackRock.
ET had reported on February 8 that the Central Depository Services India, India’s largest securities depository, was conducting an inspection of the customer verification process followed by Paytm Money. This had come in the aftermath of Reserve Bank of India’s January 31 missive, ordering Paytm Payments Bank to halt its banking services.
Since the RBI directive, One 97 Communications and Paytm Payments Bank have witnessed several top-level changes and exits. On April 9, the firm said Paytm Payments Bank MD and CEO Surinder Chawla would be stepping down.
In February, the company’s founder, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, resigned from the board of Paytm Payments Bank amid an overhaul of the banking unit. During the same month, Noida-based One 97 Communications announced that Paytm Payments Bank’s independent director Manju Agarwal also resigned. In March, Praveen Sharma, senior vice president of business at Paytm, left the company.