Director Of Product Development

This is a build-the-company role. The opportunity is to turn this relatively early-stage platform into a category-defining

payments business within the next 1-2 years. You will own Zaakpay’s ( Sister Concern) entire product portfolio—core gateway, checkout,

developer tools, merchant dashboard, risk engine, value-added services, and everything in between. You will operate

across multiple time horizons simultaneously – fixing what is broken today, shipping what matters this quarter, and

architecting where Zaakpay needs to be in two years. You will be the person who defines the why and the what,

coaches the team to figure out the how, and holds the bar on quality and velocity of output. Requires founder-level

ownership: present to the leadership one hour, debug a payment flow the next.

What You Will Do

Own the Product Vision & Strategy

• Conduct a rigorous assessment of Zaakpay’s current product, tech stack, competitive positioning, and merchant value proposition

• Define a clear, defensible 2-year product vision for Zaakpay – what we will be, what we will not be, and why

• Build a multi-horizon product strategy: immediate fixes, near-term bets, medium-term platform plays, and long-term moats. Identify and articulate the “next big thing” for Zaakpay

• Track and synthesize competitive intelligence across industry stalwarts and emerging players to inform positioning and differentiation

Lead the Product Portfolio

• Own the end-to-end product portfolio including core payment gateway, checkout experience, merchant onboarding, settlement & reconciliation, risk & fraud management, merchant dashboard & analytics, developer tools (APIs, SDKs, plugins), payment links, QR payments, recurring/subscription billing, and value-added

services

• Drive dramatic improvement in payment success rates, latency, and uptime – the table-stakes metrics that determine merchant retention and growth. Maximize transaction approval rates by improving intelligent routing algorithms and issuer-level optimizations

• Lead the charge on frictionless checkout by leveraging emerging tech and drive adoption of cutting-edge

payment innovations

• Own the compliance and regulatory product surface – RBI PA/PG guidelines and audits, data localization, tokenization mandates, KYC/e-KYC flows for merchant onboarding, and CERT-In security audit readiness

• Build merchant self-serve tools, real-time analytics dashboards, and dispute management capabilities that reduce

dependency on ops and support teams

Build a High-Performing Product Team

• Directly manage and develop a product team – with a mandate to grow the team as the business scales

• Conduct an honest assessment of current team capabilities, identify gaps, and put in place a plan to either coach up or hire up

• Establish product management rigor – consistent use of PRDs, data-backed prioritization, sprint discipline, clear acceptance criteria, and ruthless scope management

• Create a culture of ownership, speed, and craftsmanship within the product team – where shipping fast and shipping well are not in conflict

• Be deeply hands-on: review PRDs line by line, challenge assumptions, sit in on tech design reviews, and personally ensure quality standards are met before every release

Drive Technical Depth & Innovation

• Maintain a deep, current understanding of payments technology – card network protocols

(Visa/Mastercard/RuPay), UPI architecture (NPCI, PSP/TSP models), 3DS 2.0 authentication, network tokenization, device binding, EMV specifications, and PCI DSS compliance

• Stay ahead of where the industry is heading – on-device authentication via FIDO2/passkeys, RBI’s push for alternative authentication mechanisms, CBDC (e-Rupee) integration, Account Aggregator-enabled checkout, AI-native fraud scoring, real-time risk decisioning, and agentic commerce where AI agents initiate payments on behalf of users

• Have a natural curiosity and point of view on emerging global payments – and what India can learn from it

• Partner closely with the engineering team to make sound build-vs-buy decisions, evaluate third-party integrations

(acquirers, card networks, fraud vendors), and ensure the tech architecture can support 10x volume growth

Operate as a Business Leader

• Own and drive product-led growth metrics: GMV, transaction success rates, merchant activation and retention, net take rate, time-to-integration, and developer NPS

• Collaborate with Sales, BD, and Account Management to understand merchant pain points, win competitive deals, and support strategic enterprise accounts

• Present the product vision, strategy, and progress to MobiKwik Leadership with clarity, conviction, and data

• Work across functions (engineering, design, data, compliance, ops, finance) to ensure product decisions are commercially sound and operationally executable

• Bring a P&L mindset – understand unit economics of payment processing, MDR structures, interchange dynamics, and how product decisions impact revenue and margins

What We Are Looking For

Must-Haves

• 12–18 years of overall experience with at least 6–8 years in product management, and at least 3–4 years leading product for a payment gateway, payment aggregator, or payments infrastructure company in India

• Deep domain expertise in the Indian digital payments ecosystem – card networks, UPI, net banking, wallets, BNPL, recurring payments, and the regulatory landscape (RBI PA/PG framework, data localisation, tokenization mandates)

• Proven track record of building and scaling a payments product – not just maintaining it. We want someone who has taken a product from early-stage or growth-stage to meaningful scale (ideally 10x growth in GMV or merchant base)

• Strong technical acumen – you do not need to write code, but you need to understand API design, system architecture, latency optimization, database choices, and be able to have informed conversations with engineers about payment flow design, retry logic, and failure modes

• Hands-on product leadership – you have written PRDs, done competitive teardowns, sat in merchant calls, analysed funnel data, and personally driven features from concept to launch in the last 12 months, not just delegated

• Founder-level ownership and startup energy – you thrive in ambiguity, can context-switch between strategy and execution multiple times a day, and do not wait for permission to fix what is broken

• People leadership with coaching instinct – you have managed PMs at multiple levels, given hard feedback, raised team capabilities, and built a culture of high standards and high velocity

• Executive communication skills – you can present a crisp product vision to a group, simplify complex payment concepts for non-technical stakeholders, and write compelling strategy documents

Strong-to-Haves

• Experience at one or more of the leading PG/payment infrastructure companies

• Experience working closely with enterprise merchants (large e-commerce, lending platforms, transit operators,healthcare, SaaS) where payment reliability and custom integration matter

• Exposure to international payments, cross-border settlement, and multi-currency processing

• Understanding of fraud management – rule engines, ML-based scoring, chargeback management, and risk-based authentication

• Experience building developer-facing products – API design, documentation, SDKs, sandbox environments, and developer community engagement