Skip to main content
C
CorpDigest
Search

PhonePe

Indian FintechFinancial TechnologyFounded 2015
Reviewed by Swet Parvadiya
Company data updated: October 2026

Leadership History

PhonePe: CEO History

2 leaders · 2015 to present

Who is the CEO of PhonePe?

Sameer Nigam is the CEO of PhonePe, in the role since 2015.

Current CEO
Sameer Nigam (since 2015)
Leaders documented
2
Founded
2015
NameRoleFromToYears in role
Sameer NigamFounder & CEO2015Present11
Burzin EngineerCo-Founder201520249

Company Overview

PhonePe is the largest app on India's Unified Payments Interface, handling more than 45% of UPI volume. Users send money between bank accounts, scan merchant QR codes, pay bills, and buy insurance, loans and investments in one app. The company is based in Bengaluru and controlled by Walmart. It became a separate company from Flipkart in 2022 and filed for an Indian IPO in 2025. The company is headquartered in Bangalore, India. PhonePe was founded in December 2015 in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, by former Flipkart executives Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, and Burzin Engineer to pioneer payments on India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI), growing into India's dominant digital payments and fintech platform backed by Walmart.

Consumer UPI payments on PhonePe are free, and person-to-merchant UPI has carried zero merchant discount rate (MDR), so the payments app mostly works as a way to bring in users. Revenue comes from four main areas. First, merchant payments: SmartSpeaker soundbox and POS device rentals, payment gateway fees and card-based transactions. These made up about 28% of revenue in FY25 and about 31% in the six months to September 2025. Second, consumer payments such as bill payments, recharges and incentives, including government UPI incentives (PIDF). Third, distribution of loans and insurance from partner lenders and insurers, which grew from about 1% of revenue in FY23 to about 7.8% in FY25 and 11.6% in H1 FY26. Fourth, newer businesses such as the Share.Market broking app, mutual funds, the Indus Appstore and Pincode. An MDR framework for UPI being discussed in 2026 could open a new revenue stream.

Sameer Nigam

Founder & CEO

2015 – Present

11 years (current)

Key Decisions & Impact

Sameer Nigam co-founded PhonePe with Rahul Chari and Burzin Engineer to build a consumer payments network on India's newly launched Unified Payments Interface (UPI). Acquired by Flipkart in 2016, Nigam retained independent operational leadership, scaling PhonePe into India's market leader with over 500 million registered users and commanding nearly 50% of all UPI transactions. In 2022, Nigam orchestrated PhonePe's complete corporate spin-off from Flipkart and redomiciled the company from Singapore to India, raising $850 million at a $12 billion valuation from General Atlantic, Walmart, and Tiger Global.

Legacy

Nigam holds a computer engineering degree from the University of Mumbai and an MBA from The Wharton School. His technological foresight built the largest digital payments pipeline in India.

Source →

Burzin Engineer

Co-Founder

2015 – 2024

9 years

Key Decisions & Impact

Co-founded PhonePe.

Legacy

Burzin Engineer co-founded PhonePe in 2015 alongside Sameer Nigam and Rahul Chari. As Chief Reliability Officer, he architected the core engineering infrastructure and database systems required to ensure high availability and sub-second latency for a platform processing billions of UPI transactions monthly.

Source →

Challenges & Strategic Context

PhonePe's revenue grew only 11% in FY26 after several setbacks. It stopped credit-card rent payments partway through the year, which it estimated would cost ₹550-600 crore of revenue in H2 FY26. India's ban on real-money gaming in 2025 removed about $17.4 million (₹150 crore) of yearly revenue, and the government's UPI subsidies dropped. NPCI's proposed 30% volume cap per UPI app is still pending. Share.Market, Pincode, insurance and Indus Appstore all lose money, and Google Pay and Paytm compete hard.

PhonePe CEO and Leadership FAQ

Who is Sameer Nigam and what is his leadership background as CEO of PhonePe?

Sameer Nigam is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of PhonePe. An accomplished computer scientist and entrepreneur, Nigam earned a B.S. in computer science from the University of Arizona and an MBA from The Wharton School. He previously founded MIME360 (acquired by Flipkart) and served as Senior Vice President of Engineering and VP of Marketing at Flipkart.

Who is Rahul Chari and what is his technical leadership role at PhonePe?

Rahul Chari is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of PhonePe. A master's graduate in computer science from Purdue University, Chari co-founded MIME360 and served as Vice President of Engineering at Flipkart, architecting PhonePe's high-scale, fault-tolerant transactional microservices backend.

Who is Burzin Engineer and what is his role as Chief Reliability Officer?

Burzin Engineer is the co-founder and Chief Reliability Officer of PhonePe. A veteran systems architect with a master's in computer science from the University of Southern California, Engineer leads PhonePe's cloud infrastructure, green data center engineering, cybersecurity, and platform uptime.

What is Sameer Nigam's public advocacy regarding the Indian digital economy?

Sameer Nigam is an outspoken champion of Indian entrepreneurship, advocating for fair competition in mobile app stores (via Indus Appstore), data sovereignty, constructive fintech regulation with the RBI and NPCI, and building high-quality financial technology infrastructure for all Indians.

Who are the other key executive leaders at PhonePe?

Key executives include Adarsh Nahata (Chief Financial Officer), Vivek Lohcheb (CEO of Pincode), Ujjwal Jain (CEO of Share.Market), Hemant Gala, and senior leaders across insurance, merchant acquiring, and government regulatory affairs.

How did leadership guide PhonePe through the 2020 YES Bank moratorium crisis?

In March 2020, when PhonePe's sole banking partner YES Bank was placed under a temporary 24-hour moratorium by the RBI, Sameer Nigam and Rahul Chari orchestrated a well-known 24-hour marathon engineering sprint, migrating millions of users to ICICI Bank within 24 hours with zero data loss.

How did the founders execute PhonePe's complete separation from Flipkart in 2022?

In December 2022, Sameer Nigam and Walmart successfully executed the full legal, corporate, and structural separation of PhonePe from the Flipkart Group, establishing PhonePe as an independent entity domiciled in India and setting the stage for its upcoming public listing.

What is Sameer Nigam's long-term vision for PhonePe over the next decade?

Sameer Nigam envisions PhonePe as the universal digital operating system for India, powering payments, savings, credit, insurance, app distribution, and commerce for 1 billion citizens, bridging the urban-rural economic divide.

Related Leadership Timelines

Compare executive leadership tenures and strategic transitions

Competitor

Paytm

View Leadership Timelines
Competitor

Razorpay

View Leadership Timelines
Competitor

Google

View Leadership Timelines
Competitor

Bharatpe

View Leadership Timelines
Competitor

Cred

View Leadership Timelines
Competitor

Flipkart

View Leadership Timelines

Explore PhonePe

Core profile pages, founders and related research hubs for this company.

Content is for informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Data sourced from SEC filings, annual reports, and public records. See our full disclaimer and methodology.