Shreyas Srinivasan, Paytm CPO and founder of Insider.in, bids farewell to the unicorn; shares heartfelt message

Shreyas Srinivasan, Chief Product Officer at Paytm, has announced his exit from the company and its ticketing platform Insider.in, ending a career that spanned over a decade in the tech and live entertainment field.

His exit follows the sale of Paytm's ticketing business to Zomato in August 2024 for Rs 2,048 crore.

Srinivasan, took to his LinkedIn to announce the end of his time with Paytm and said that Monday was his last day here, while August was the final month with Insider.

"In august, when the deal between Zomato and Paytm Entertainment closed, It felt like the right time to take a break, fix tech debt of my body and re-discover a passion I can chase for the next 2 decades," he said in his post.

The deal between Paytm and Zomato has helped the former to make lemonade out of lemons, for now at least as One97 Communications surpassed expectations in Q2 FY 2025 by posting a profit of Rs 930 crore, defying predictions of widened losses up to Rs 660 crore.

This significant profit was driven by a one-time exceptional gain of Rs 1,345 crore from the sale of its entertainment ticketing business to Zomato.

Srinivasan's heartfelt post
In his post, Srinivasan briefed about his professional journey, which began in 2010 at NH7, where he gained foundational knowledge in concerts and consumer experiences.

His work there paved the way for the creation of Insider.in in 2014, a platform that filled the gap for live entertainment ticketing in India. Srinivasan led Insider.in through its early challenges, creating comprehensive solutions for ticketing, which positioned the platform for growth.

"At that time there was no platform dedicated to live entertainment and I was uniquely positioned to build a product in this space. Building a new platform needed new solutions in every part of the ticketing stack," he wrote.

By 2017, Insider.in had caught attention and Srinivasan needed a partner. That's when Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Madhur Deora provided pivotal support that fueled its rapid development.

"It took all of 3 hours for Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Madhur Deora to back us and I owe them a great deal of gratitude. Insider couldn't have become the success it did (psst: Zomato deal) without their backing," Srinivasan said.

This partnership ultimately led to Insider.in merging with Paytm in 2018, becoming Paytm Insider. By 2020, the platform had established itself as a leader in sports ticketing and a strong competitor in other categories.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted the live events sector, pushing the business to near-zero operations.

Reflecting on the pandemic’s challenges, Srinivasan said, “Great teams figure out a way to stay alive, and great culture allows you to grow coming out of a crisis.”

The team split, with part transitioning to work on Paytm's core product and others, led by Varun Khare, Dipti Goel, and Yuvraj B., waiting for the live entertainment sector to rebound.

"The first team moved to working on the Paytm product. This team was full of stellar leaders like Neehar Venugopal, Abhishek Madan and Prashant Tiwari, they quickly became senior-most leaders in Paytm," he said adding, "Once things opened up, this team (the second) went on an absolute tear and grew this business more than 4x in the last 2 years."