PhonePe has announced the appointment of Zarin Daruwala, the former CEO of Standard Chartered Bank India and South Asia, to its board of directors. This strategic move comes as the company intensifies its preparations for a highly anticipated initial public offering (IPO). Daruwala, a seasoned leader with more than thirty years of banking experience, concluded her tenure at Standard Chartered in April 2025 after a successful nine-year leadership period. Her career also includes a significant 26-year stint at ICICI Bank, where she held several key positions, notably as President of Wholesale Banking.
The timing of this appointment follows a series of critical steps in PhonePe’s IPO journey. In late 2022, PhonePe restructured its corporate framework and shifted its domicile from Singapore to India, a move that involved a substantial tax outlay of nearly ₹8,000 crore. This restructuring demonstrated PhonePe’s commitment to a domestic listing and aligned its operations with Indian regulatory requirements. The current board at PhonePe now includes a diverse group of industry leaders and experts, such as Teamlease founder Manish Sabharwal, former Blackrock executive Rohit Bhagat, former IAS officer Tarun Chugh, and Walmart executives John David Rainey, Donna Morris, and Leigh Hopkins, in addition to PhonePe’s co-founders Sameer Nigam and Rahul Chari.
PhonePe’s dominance in the Unified Payments Interface ecosystem is well established, with the platform handling nearly half of all UPI transactions in India. The company has consistently outperformed competitors in both transaction volume and technological innovation. Financially, PhonePe has reported impressive growth, with a 73 percent year-on-year increase in revenue to ₹5,064 crore in FY24 and a turnaround to a profit after tax of ₹197 crore, compared to a loss of ₹738 crore the previous year.
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The appointment of Zarin Daruwala is assured to enhance PhonePe’s boardroom strength and strategic direction, reinforcing its ambition to set new benchmarks in India’s fintech landscape as it moves toward one of the most closely watched IPOs in the country’s financial markets.
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