At least two of them—Prithvi Raj Tejavath, business head–investments, and Vivek Agarwal, operations platform head–investments—plan to start their own company, said three people familiar with the developments. Aastha Sood, director–products, has also reigned but it wasn’t clear if she will also be a part of the new startup.
“Tejavath and Agarwal plan to build something of their own at the intersection of wealth management and artificial intelligence,” said one of the three people familiar with their plans, adding that Tejavath and Agarwal had begun talks with investors on funding for their new venture.
“(Jupiter) is also undergoing a restructuring exercise with various cost-cutting measures that are in place to reducing customer acquisition costs and head count in certain divisions,” said the second of the three people familiar with the developments.
Also read | Is the fintech sector in India under a regulatory siege?
Jupiter’s founder and chief executive officer Jitendra Gupta confirmed the departures of Tejavath, Agarwal and Sood.
“At Jupiter, we have entrepreneurial culture and people operate like founders for their roles. We strongly encourage people to start(up) if they have aspirations to do so and help them in conceptualising idea as well,” said Gupta. “So far, we have created 16-17 companies out of Jupiter employees… this year also, we are seeing couple of people taking the path and we are supporting them.”
However, Gupta denied any layoffs at Jupiter, which has over 700 employees.
“Regarding restructuring, every year, we look to optimise org structure basis next year growth trajectory and focus on specific business lines. This year is also business as usual for us wherein we are elevating few people to take higher responsibilities and take new roles to expand core verticals,” he said.
Tejavath and Agarwal co-founded wealth management platform Upwardly in 2016. Three years later, Upwardly merged with Scripbox, where Tejavath was chief product officer and Agarwal a co-founder and chief operating officer, as per their LinkedIn profiles.
Tejavath, Agarwal and Sood did not immediately reply to Mint’s queries emailed on Monday afternoon.
Jupiter’s ambitions
Founded in 2019 by Gupta, Jupiter is a neobanking or online-only banking platform that offers services such as savings accounts, money transfers, and cash withdrawals. It competes with other neobanks such as Open, NiYO, FamPay, Fi Money, and RazorPayX.
In July 2023, Jupiter secured a nonbanking finance company licence from the Reserve Bank of India, which allowed it to begin lending, and subsequently a mobile wallet licence.
Jupiter achieved considerable success targeting mostly young, urban individuals for its lending business, and planned to replicate the business model for small and medium enterprises, Gupta told Mint in June last year.
Also read | NBFCs gain fresh momentum as RBI eases bank lending norms
At the time, he also said Jupiter was focused on controlling cost decisions around hiring, technology and revenue expansion. One of the goals, he said, was to shrink the time needed to recover the money spent on gaining customers.
“Last year, our visibility was that we would be able to recover our CAC (customer acquisition costs) in 22 months. This year, we will be able to recover our CAC in 14 months,” he said in June.
Gupta had previously founded fintech startup Citrus Payments Solutions, which PayU acquired in 2016 for $130 million.
Jupiter was valued at $711 million in December 2021, when it raised $86 million in equity in a funding round led by Tiger Global. Last year, its NBFC business raised ₹20 crore in its maiden round, which was led by Peak XV Partners.
Much like some of its peers, Jupiter has been grappling with losses. In FY24, it reported ₹35.8 crore in revenue from operations, a nearly fivefold increase from a year earlier, helping it narrow its losses by 16% to ₹276 crore.
