Grab, which is one of the leading player in the cab-hailing market of Southeast Asia, has roped in former Paytm executive Vikas Agrawal as the chief technology officer (CTO) for its payments arm GrabPay.
At Paytm, Vikas was leading the engineering division. Now, for his new role in Grab, he will be based in Bangalore. Although Grab is not operating in India, it has established its engineering division in Bangalore.
Commenting on this new appointment, Theo Vassilakis, group CTO at Grab, said:
Vikas has steered some of the world’s largest e-payments platforms through rapid growth, including during the critical time of 2016’s demonetisation of higher value banknotes in India. We believe Southeast Asia has the same potential for e-payments in the next 12 months.
Prior to joining Paytm, Vikas Agrawal— an IIM-Bangalore alumnus—was the founding member and CTO at Fashionara, an e-commerce startup. He has also previously worked as vice president of engineering at software solutions firm Tavant Technologies and as a technical architect at e-payments firm CyberCash.
About one year ago, Grab launched its own payments company — GrabPay. As per the company, it witnesses more than 3.5 million transactions daily and claims to be on track for 1 billion transactions per year.
The company has also launched GrabPay Credits — a top-up service, and later released GrabRewards, which is a loyalty programme. For this, the company has already signed up more than 300 merchants. In Singapore, the platform recently launched its peer-to-peer payments services as well as in-store and in-restaurant payments services.
Grab, which was formerly known as GrabTaxi, is one of the largest transportation networks in Southeast Asia. It ranks amongst the most frequently used mobile platforms in the region with up to 1.5 million daily bookings.