ZestMoney founders to exit troubled fintech firm post PhonePe deal falling through

“There was a town hall held on Monday by the management where the founders informed the rest of the team that they are leaving the company,” said one of the persons briefed on the matter.

In an internal communication to the team, Chapman said that the founders will continue to be major shareholders and will support the transition to a new management over the next four months.

Also read | ETtech Exclusive: PhonePe may waive off ZestMoney’s $18 million debt after failed acquisition

“Priya, Ashish and myself started ZestMoney almost 8 years ago with a dream of making life affordable for millions of Indians…we are proud of how far we went on that journey and the advances we made in truly democratising credit in the country using our path-breaking technology. Over the last few weeks, we have done a lot of thinking and whilst it has been very hard for us to arrive at this conclusion, we have decided that we will step away from our Operating roles as CEO (Lizzie), CFO & COO (Priya) and CTO (Ashish),” Chapman said in her communication.

We have 100% belief and faith in the potential that ZestMoney has and the new management team who will step up at this time and we will do absolutely everything we can to support them and you, both over the next 4 months as we transition, and over the longer term, she added.

According to data from Tracxn, the three founders collectively owned around 18% in Primrose Hill Ventures, the corporate entity of ZestMoney. The other major shareholders in the company are PayU, Ribbit Capital, Zip and Omidyar Network.ZestMoney offers buy now pay later as a payment check out option on ecommerce platforms and few offline organized retail outlets.

The quick crest startup fell into tough times after the global BNPL story unfolded over the last one year.

The PayU-backed startup was scouting for fresh VC funding when it was about to be acquired by digital payments major PhonePe.