We'll get a proportionate share of rival’s customers: PhonePe CEO Sameer Nigam on Paytm crisis

PhonePe’s founder and CEO Sameer Nigam on February 19 said that the fintech company does expect a good share of its rival’s customers to come on board. While he didn’t mention the big rival’s name, he was alluding to the ongoing Paytm regulatory fallout with the Reserve Bank of India.

Responding to an audience query on a big unnamed “rival” having a regulatory run-in and its impact, during his panel at the Mumbai Tech Week, Nigam said, “I think we will (gain users). If there is a loss, we'll get a proportionate share. If I said we won't get any of them, you’ll call me a hypocrite. If I said I'll try and get all of them, you will call me an opportunist. So I will just split it down in the middle, and say some will come.” Nigam spoke in detail about the overall regulatory environment for fintechs and RBI’s action against this rival company.

“Eight years into this industry, and I'll confess, I've learned the hard way. There are certain things where I have information asymmetry. In terms of RBI legislature, for example, on the innovation side, they'll let us as the industry lead and they follow up,” he said. “Then there are certain things, especially at the macroeconomic level, whether it's the Chinese lending apps, whether it's certain apps getting banned – the regulator and the government have more data than I do. So, I don't have all the details. Unfortunately, all the details are not published on the website. This is how many wallets were lacking KYC.,” he added.

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