Bharti Airtel to buy mobile payments firm; hires new global CFO

India’s Bharti Airtel (BSE: BHARTIARTL) has agreed to acquire mobile payments provider YTS Solutions and appointed its co-founder and managing director Manish Khera as the new CEO of its Airtel M Commerce Services (AMSL) unit.
Airtel, the country’s…

India’s Bharti Airtel (BSE: BHARTIARTL) has agreed to acquire mobile payments provider YTS Solutions and appointed its co-founder and managing director Manish Khera as the new CEO of its Airtel M Commerce Services (AMSL) unit.

Airtel, the country’s largest mobile operator, did not disclose financial details of the deal but said it will help it to expand its portfolio in the mobile commerce segment and “bring in a host of new product capabilities targeted at migrants in urban cities and their families in rural towns and villages – thus strengthening Airtel’s long-term commitment towards driving financial inclusion in India”.

Airtel said YTS Solutions, a two-year-old Mumbai-based start-up, has developed innovative financial products focused on both mass market and micro transactions.

As a result of the integration, Khera will become CEO of AMSL, which operates under the Airtel Money brand name, reporting to Airtel’s MD & CEO  for India and South Asia, Gopal Vittal. Meanwhile, YTS co-founder and CEO Shweta Aprameya will take on the role of chief operating officer at the combined company.

Vittal said he is confident Khera will “help lead our mobile commerce and payments business to reach millions of underserved Indians”.

Airtel applied to the Reserve Bank of India in January for a payments bank licence but it still awaiting its decision.

Airtel is one of several Indian mobile operators with so-called ‘mobile wallets’, which enable customers to make payments via wireless devices. Others include number two and three players Vodafone and Idea Cellular which have M-Pesa and Idea Money respectively. They compete with independent companies such as PayTM, MobiKwik and PayU for a share of the fast-growing mobile commerce sector.

Names new global CFO

Meanwhile, Airtel has appointed Nilanjan Roy as its global CFO from 5 August.

He will take over from Srikanth Balachandran, who will become the global chief human resources officer, the telco said in a stock exchange filing following a meeting of the board of directors today. Balachandran has held the global CFO role since April 2011.

Roy is currently the CFO of Airtel’s India and South Asia business. His previous posts with the company were as financial controller and controller of the India Mobile Business unit. He worked for Unilver in India and overeas for 15 years before joining the telco.

Airtel today reported a net profit of Rs15.5bn (US$243.3m) for the quarter ended 30 June 2015, up from Rs11.1bn (US$174.2m) for the corresponding quarter in 2014.