Refyne, India’s leading employee financial wellness platform, expands leadership with four key hires
efyne, the leader in on-demand pay in India, today announced the appointment of four senior executives as part of its leadership team. The fintech firm brings onboard Karthik Krishna as VP Engineering, Krishan Agarwal as VP Finance, Megha Sharma as VP People & Culture, and Smriti Somani as VP, Enterprise Marketing. With these new additions, Refyne looks to unlock strategic growth across key industry domains and retain its dominant position in the on-demand salary category in India.
The company’s team has grown more than 3x in just a year, with a total employee base nearing 110, as of 2022. Founded in 2021, Refyne is currently partnered with over 200 corporates, enabling earned wage access for nearly 1 million employees in India.
Remarking on the senior appointments, Chitresh Sharma, CEO, and Co-founder, Refyne, said, “Over the last year, Refyne has set an incredibly high benchmark for Earned Wage Access (EWA) in India. We’re rapidly growing our customer offerings, taking a proactive approach toward user needs. Karthik, Krishan, Megha, and Smriti join us at a remarkable time in our growth story, and we’re thrilled to welcome them to the leadership team.’
Apoorv Kumar, Co-Founder & CTO, Refyne added “Their expertise will be the catalyst that propels us and helps realize our mission of enabling financial wellness for the Indian workforce. We’re excited about their infusion with the existing team’s capabilities and look forward to improving Refyne for employers and their employees.” Apoorv added that Refyne plans to grow the team across product, sales, client success, marketing, engineering further and expand its presence across India.
Karthik Krishna joins Refyne as Vice President, Engineering, with more than 22 years of experience in fintech and telco, and more recently with Intuit India as a platform engineering leader. His recent experience includes leading product & platform transformations on distributed systems, driving overall engineering, operational and process excellence. At Refyne, Karthik will be tasked with building the engineering culture and scaling the product to support millions of users. Karthik has previously worked with brands like Huawei and L&T Infotech.
Krishan Agarwal, Vice President, Finance comes with more than 15 years of experience in finance across industries – including IT, manufacturing/retail and financial services. His expertise includes core strategy, building business processes, business structuring/restructuring, alongside financial modeling and reporting. Krishan comes with a mix of experience with multinational organizations as well as startups, including KPMG, Goldman Sachs and 75F.
Megha Sharma has been appointed Vice President, People & Culture. She has more than a decade of experience in people and culture management, having worked with multinational firms like Voltas and ExxonMobil and startups like Repup. Her expertise includes core strategic HR, learning and development and talent management in India and overseas. At Refyne, Megha will lead creation of a diverse and inclusive environment, talent acquisition and retention and will focus on strengthening organizational culture.
Lastly, Smriti Somani, Vice President, Enterprise Marketing, will be responsible for leading the marketing strategy for the enterprise business at Refyne. She will develop and lead the programs to generate brand awareness and accelerate adoption of Refyne’s platform. Prior to joining Refyne, Smriti was associated with Zeta, as Senior Director- Marketing. She has extensive experience in B2B and B2C verticals and has worked with leading brands such as Audi, JM Financial, Colgate-Palmolive.
Earned Wage Access enables employees to access a portion of their earned but unpaid salary, any time before payday. Refyne’s transacting user base has expanded 68x in less than a year, and the platform has seen 165x growth in the amount of transactions, highlighting the liquidity vacuum that EWA is addressing.