Bharti Airtel has appointed Manish Khera as CEO of Airtel M Commerce Services (AMSL) that offers Airtel Money services.
The decision to appoint Manish Khera follows Airtel’s plan to acquire digital financial service provider YTS Solutions.
Manish Khera is the co-founder and MD of YTS Solutions. Prior to founding YTS, Manish was MD and CEO of FINO Pay Tech Ltd, and earlier worked in ICICI Bank.
The Indian telecom service provider aims to strengthen AMSL, which launched Airtel Money in 2011, the first prepaid mobile wallet by a telecom services provider. In January 2015, AMSL applied to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for a Payments’ Bank License.
Manish will be a part of the Airtel Management Board and report to Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO of Bharti Airtel (India & South Asia).
Though launched four years ago, Airtel money is yet to become a significant player in the Indian mobile wallet market. For comparison, Vodafone M-Pesa has a pan-India distribution of more than 90,000 agents and more than 3 million customers.
AMSL, the wholly owned subsidiary of Airtel, also announced that it would integrate the payments and remittance businesses of YTS Solutions.
Airtel has 230 million customers. Out of this, over 100 million customers are in rural India. Its mobile network covers 430,000 towns and villages backed by 1.5 million distribution outlets.
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