Chennai-based M2P Fintech has appointed former Hitachi Payment Services finance executive Vivek Seshadri as group CFO, as it begins laying the groundwork for a potential IPO over the next few years, co-founder and CEO Madhusudanan R told Mint.
The move marks a formal step toward institutionalizing the fintech’s finance function as it scales globally and prepares for eventual public markets scrutiny. While the company says a listing is still “at least a couple of years away”, the hire signals that IPO preparation has begun internally.
“We are at least a couple of years away,” said Madhu. “But inevitably that will be the path that we will take…”
Seshadri, who has more than 15 years of experience across strategic finance, capital markets, M&A and investor relations, will lead M2P’s global finance organisation and take charge of finance, investor relations, capital strategy and M&A.
India’s fintech industry is projected to grow nearly 10x in revenue to $180-200 billion by 2030 from $20 billion in 2023, with fintech’s share of the broader BFSI market expected to rise to 20% from 5%, according to EY’s January 2025 report.
While SaaS remains a relatively small slice of the fintech revenue pool, its share is expected to double to 2% by 2030, implying a market size of roughly $3.6-4 billion, while other segments like Payments and Neobanking shrink in size.
M2P operates in an increasingly competitive banking-as-a-service and fintech infrastructure landscape. It competes with firms such as Setu (which was acquired by Pine Labs, now a listed entity), Stripe, OneStack, TransBnk and Zeta, among other startups.
Global tilt
The appointment comes as the company accelerates its international expansion across West Asia, South-East Asia, and the United States.
As of FY26, Madhu said the company’s international business was close to 40% of revenue. “Today it is 60-40. In the next two years we expect that to be more of a 40-60.”
Founded in 2014 by Madhu, Muthukumar A., and Prabhu R. as an API (application programming interface) infrastructure company, M2P has evolved into a banking-as-a-service company catering to banks, lenders, fintech and consumer technology companies.
The company was last valued at over $750 million in 2024 during a close to $100 million funding round led by Helios. Overall, the firm has raised over $200 million from investors including Tiger Global, Better Capital and MUFG Innovation Partners, the corporate venture arm of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc (MUFG).
Integration phase
Madhu said the appointment also follows an 18-month phase of integrating past acquisitions and tightening execution across the business.
“In the last 18 months, we tried to consolidate all these (acquired) assets and figured out how we can deliver sitting in India for the world,” he said.
As the business scales across geographies, he said, pricing strategy, market selection and regulatory requirements have increased the need for a stronger finance function.
“There is a need for a very strong finance function also, at our stage of maturity level. You have to know what markets to go after, how to price for a product… there are a lot of finance functions that go into how the strategy is for the business.”
Growth vs losses
M2P Fintech’s operating revenue grew 4% year-on-year to ₹506 crore in FY25 from ₹487 crore in FY24, even as its net loss widened 91% to ₹256 crore in FY25 from ₹134 crore a year earlier.
Madhu said M2P had deliberately accelerated investment in people, infrastructure and local market presence, accepting near-term losses.
“We had made a conscious call to accelerate some of these investments, since any new market takes a while to start generating profits. In the short term you will lose money but you will start seeing that in the long term,” he said.
The company is now “getting out of that whole investment phase,” he added, and said that the last two quarters were profitable. He said FY27 should start profitably from the first quarter.
