MobiKwik appoints ixigo\'s Saurabh Srivastava as CMO

MobiKwik, the Mobile Wallet with over 15 million users, has announced the appointment of Saurabh Srivastava as Chief Marketing Officer. Saurabh was previously VP – Marketing & Product Strategy at ixigo.com and has extensive experience in media, marketing, retail and branding. In his position as CMO, he will be a part of MobiKwik’s core leadership team.

Saurabh, in his last role at ixigo.com was responsible for creating brand awareness, driving consumer insights and data to shape new products and building a superior marketing team. He brings with him 13 plus years of rich experience in consumer centric businesses and has worked with leading consumer and media brands like Goodyear, Maruti Suzuki, Dainik Jagran, GroupM and DDB in the past.

Bipin Preet Singh, Founder and CEO, MobiKwik, said, “Saurabh brings with him the experience of working with a variety of consumer brands both in the physical and online space and at different stages of their lifecycle. His experience of nurturing and growing brands, ability to understand consumer internet markets and drive data led consumer insights to achieve brand leadership are skills that will help MobiKwik reach the next level of growth. We welcome Saurabh on board and look forward to working with him to achieve our vision of creating the most preferred mobile wallet for customers and merchants.”

Speaking about his new role, Saurabh said, “Mobile wallets are fast becoming the payment instrument of choice for Indians from all walks of life and MobiKwik is at the forefront of this revolution. This role will give me an opportunity to shape the way Indians look at payments and make mobile wallets a household phenomenon. I am up to the challenge of helping create a consumer Internet brand that millions of customers across the country would love. I look forward to joining MobiKwik and working with great minds at MobiKwik to create the next generation mobile payments system for India.”

MobiKwik said that the company is making a big offline push this year and has recently entered into a partnership with India’s leading retail chain of coffee cafés, Café Coffee Day (CCD) to enable customers make payments through the MobiKwik wallet across all outlets in India. Saurabh’s understanding of offline retail will be useful for the company in its bid to get more and more offline retailers to adopt mobile wallets.

Saurabh has done his Post Graduation in Marketing &Communications from MICA, and holds certificates in Strategic Marketing & Leadership from ISB, Hyderabad and Diploma in Business Finance from ICFAI, Hyderabad.

MobiKwik has recently raised close to $25 million in a Series B round from Tree Line Asia, Cisco Investments, American Express and existing investor, Sequoia Capital. The funds will be used for investments in technology/data analytics, brand building and growing the network of users and merchants. In 2015, the company aims to create a brick-and-mortar retail network of more than 100,000 merchants across India. These stores will serve both as points for cash loading into the wallet and for wallet payments acceptance.