UPI Growth Lead & Operations Manager

About the Role:

We are looking for one senior, hands-on owner for UPI growth and the UPI operation behind it. You will grow our UPI user base through smart cashback, sharp campaigns and early launches of new NPCI products, while keeping payments reliable, disputes on time and compliance clean.

Responsibilities:

• Own the UPI growth targets: registrations, first-payment activation, monthly transacting users (MTU), transactions per user and market share.
• Work with product to cut drop-offs across onboarding: device binding, bank account linking, UPI PIN setup and the first payment.
• Design cashback and reward mechanics with clear unit economics. Judge every campaign on incremental impact and own the cashback budget.
• Run referral, reactivation and win-back programs with the CRM team across push, SMS, WhatsApp and in-app.
• Plan campaigns around the festive season, IPL and big sale events, and bring in co-funded offers from banks, merchants and brands.
• Stop reward abuse and fraud with the risk team, without adding friction for genuine users.
• Take new NPCI products (UPI Lite, RuPay credit on UPI, credit line on UPI, UPI Circle and more) to market early, from business case to go-live.
• Own daily UPI operations: transaction success rate, bank escalations, outages and RCAs, disputes within RBI turnaround times, and reconciliation.
• Stay audit-ready and compliant with NPCI, RBI and partner bank rules, and manage our relationships with NPCI and partner banks.

Required Skills:

• Working knowledge of the UPI ecosystem: NPCI, PSP and issuer banks, the TPAP model, payment flows, settlement and disputes.
• A record of cashback-led growth with proven ROI, showing both gross and incremental impact.
• Hands-on UPI operations experience: success-rate management, bank escalations, disputes and reconciliation.
• Strong with data: SQL or advanced Excel, dashboards and campaign P&L.
• Calm in a war room during outages and festive peaks. Able to lead product, engineering, risk, finance and support teams without direct authority.
• Clear writing for business cases, RCAs and regulator-facing documents.

Required Qualifications:

• 6+ years of experience, including at least 4 years in UPI or digital payments at a TPAP, PSP bank, payment aggregator or fintech.
• Existing working relationships with NPCI and partner banks (strongly preferred).
• MBA or equivalent preferred; relevant experience counts for more.

Good to have:

Launch experience on an NPCI product, merchant ecosystem understanding, exposure to fraud and risk tools, and knowledge of BBPS, PPIs and cards.