Alibaba's former executive is Paytm president

New Delhi: Paytm, India's mobile payment and commerce platform has appointed ex-head of Alibaba Group Holding's wholesale business, Bhushan Patil as the company's new President.

Bhushan Patil joins Paytm as President after serving 5.5 years at the Chinese company, where he was handling operations of Alibaba.com. He will now focus on building Paytm's cross border commerce.

At the largest B2B marketplace, Bhushan was instrumental at leading new initiatives for Global Markets business development across SME linked associations, Banks and Government trade organizations, local trade services and e-companies.

As a major accomplishment he incepted, led and launched B2B Trade-Trust products across 50 countries in Asia/Europe and Americas and was instrumental developing new India plans for Alibaba.com B2B business.

On the announcement, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, CEO and Founder, Paytm said, "We want to offer Indian merchants a compelling commerce platform and Bhushan brings incredible experience of building cross border commerce. It will help Indian merchants to sell globally too."

"As Paytm continues to grow at an exponential pace, it is important for Paytm to expand its operations outside India for further development. We welcome him to be a part of Paytm's go big, go global strategy," added Shekhar.

Validating Paytm's expansion opportunity, Bhushan Patil President Paytm said, "It is indeed an honor to be a part of the Paytm vision and strategy both towards national cashless economy and the plan to take Paytm overseas."

"I'm thrilled to come on board at one of the fastest scaling payments and commerce platforms in the country and look forward to a mutually successful tenure at Paytm," added Bhushan Patil.

Paytm's Indian business is growing increasingly as it is aiming to sell USD two billion worth of products in 2016 with a growth of five lakh from 1.7 lakh currently.