BHARATI VIDYAPEETH

(DEEMED TO BE UNIVERSITY), PUNE,

INDIA
INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT AND
ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT, PUNE

Research Project on PhonePe Pvt Ltd

Award of degree of Master of Business Administration
2021-2023

Submitted by: Shreya

Roll no: 43
Class: MBA HR 2nd Year

Guided by: Dr. Anuradha Yesugade

Prof. Dr. Sachin S Vernekar

MBA Director, IMED, Pune
 Acknowledgement

Apart from my efforts, the success of my project depends largely on the encouragement and
guideline of many others. I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the people who
have been instrumental in the successful completion of this project.

I am gratefully indebted to our esteemed guide Dr. Sachin Ayarekar for his
sincere guidance and priceless support which would have been impossible
for us to complete this project.

I express my gratitude to the staff members of Bharati Vidyapeeth (Deemed to be

University) who directly or indirectly helped me. I would also like to express my sincere
gratitude to all my office colleagues Manmeet, Ivy, Chandika, Gauri in PhonePe pvt ltd.
 Preface

In this era of fast changing world, mere classroom teaching is not sufficient to attain maturity
and perfection for application of theory into practice. The dynamic economy, political and
technological environment in which we live continually places demands on us to change,
improve and learn more about jobs, superiors and subordinates. Two years of continuous
classroom teaching is sufficient for students to directly implement their knowledge in the
market. A practical approach is needed.

The knowledge through project report is an essential requirement for M.B.A students.
The purpose of this project report is to study the title of the report) with special reference to
PhonePe Pvt Ltd.

I have tried my level best to do justice to the project. And I hope the study which was
conducted will help not only the organization but also me and the society too.
 Index
CHAPTER 1: Introduction

● Company logo
● Vision, culture & Values
● Company, team, Individual level value
● Over the year development
● Founders
● Services offered
● Awards

CHAPTER 2: Current Work review

● Recruitment and selection at PhonePe; tools & techniques
● Recruitment process at PhonePe; internal & external, ATS

CHAPTER 3: Changes and SLAs

● Changes in last 6 months

CHAPTER 4: My Contribution to PhonePe

 CHAPTER 1:

INTRODUCTION

I started working at PhonePe Pvt Ltd. in January, I

interned there for 3 months before getting a summer

internship opportunity and getting a PPO. During my

first 3 months, I was handling end to end recruitment

for Merchant Experience dept, which deals with the

merchant side of business. Recently in my summer

internship I worked under Ivy Das(lead TA) and

Chandrika Srivastan(Head TA). I handled end to end

recruitment for the Tech team in which I handled

recruitment front for AppSec(App security), Product

management, software engineer(front & backend),

Design team and Product solution engineer. In my time

of two months in-office working, I got to know a lot

about the company culture and environment, it also

helped me learn a lot about talent acquisition in general

and various other HR functions.

PhonePe as a company is very vast and therefore I’ll try to sum it up.
COMPANY LOGO:
AS A COMPANY:
PhonePe is an Indian digital payments and financial technology company
headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. PhonePe was founded in December
2015, by Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari and Burzin Engineer. The PhonePe app,
based on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), went live in August 2016. It is
owned by Flipkart, a subsidiary of Walmart. The PhonePe app is available in 11
Indian languages. Using PhonePe, users can send and receive money, recharge
mobile, DTH, data cards, make utility payments, pay at shops, invest in tax saving
funds, liquid funds, buy insurance, mutual funds, gold and silver. PhonePe also
allows users to book their Ola rides, pay for Redbus tickets, book flights and hotels
on Goibibo through its Switch platform.
PhonePe is accepted as a payment option by over 2.5 crore offline and online
merchant outlets across 15,700 towns and villages. The app served more than 10
crore users as of June 2018, and processed 500 crore transactions by December
2019. It currently has over 35 crore registered users with over 15 crore monthly
active users]
PhonePe is licensed by the Reserve Bank of India for issuance and operation of
a Semi Closed Prepaid Payment system with Authorisation Number: 75/2014
dated 22 August 2014.
In May 2022, PhonePe announced the acquisition of India-based Wealth
Management fund WealthDesk for $50 million and Smart Beta Wealth
Management Platform, OpenQ for $25 million. The deals were worth $75
million and done with the aim of widening PhonePe's offerings in the
payments market.
PhonePe’s Vision, Culture & Values:

The PhonePe Vision is to build a large, scalable & open transaction

ecosystem that creates maximum positive impact for all stakeholders in the
ecosystem.

The key attributes of our culture to enable this vision are defined as below. The
intent is for these to act as a decision-making framework that can guide us in
times of ambiguity and help us push back when these attributes are not practiced.
You are not expected to memorize the list, but to use it to simplify decision
making.

‘Integrity’: Integrity and honesty are the price of admission to PhonePe.

We have a zero tolerance policy towards bribery, corruption, dishonesty,
discrimination and politics.
HOW WE CONDUCT BUSINESS:

1. ‘Customer First’
2. ‘Positive Disruption’
3. ‘Holistic Approach’
4. ‘Learn Fast, Fail Fast’
5. ‘Simplicity
Breeds
Scalability’ 6.
‘Bias For
Impact’
COMPANY LEVEL VALUES:

1.
‘Perseverance
and
Conviction’ 2.
‘Transpare cy’

TEAM LEVEL VALUES:

1. ‘Collaboration’
2. ‘Excellence in people’

INDIVIDUAL LEVEL VALUES:

1. ‘Learn More. It’s Free!

2. ‘Passion’
3. ‘Openness Of Thought’
OVER THE YEAR DEVELOPMENT:
2016

● Flipkart acquires PhonePe

● The PhonePe app goes live

2017

● Becomes 1st UPI based app to cross 10 million

app downloads ● Rated the #1 Finance App on

Apple App Store & Google Play Store ● Emerges

as the largest driver of UPI transactions

nationwide ● Hits 1 million app transactions in a

day

2018

● Launches Micro-apps on the platform

● Wins the NPCI award for

excellence as a UPI Merchant ●

Crosses 1 Billion transactions on the

app

2019

● Crosses 2 billion transactions on the app

● Wins the ‘Best Mobile Payment Product or Service’ at the 9th

IAMAI India Digital Awards.

 ● Ranks amongst Top 10 most trusted Digital Brands in

India by Brand Equity ● Ranks amongst Top 10 most

trafficked platforms by Comscore

2020

● Wins the best mobile payment product/service category and the

technology category at IAMAI India digital awards

● The PhonePe ATM goes live across 10 lakh stores in 300 cities

● Launches Liquid funds,Super funds and 7 more curated MF

category products ● LaunchesTravel Insurance,Coronavirus

Insurance, Motor Insurance & more Insurance offerings

● Becomes India’s fastest growing insure-tech distributor with a sale of

5 lakh policies in 5 months

● Crosses the 250 million registered users mark; market-leading share

of over 40% in UPI transactions

 Our Founders

Sameer Nigam
Sameer Nigam founded PhonePe in 2015 and serves as its Chief Executive
Officer. Before PhonePe, he served as the SVP Engineering and VP
Marketing at Flipkart. His Flipkart journey started in 2011 when the
company acquired his earlier startup - Mime360, a digital media distribution
platform. Sameer has also served as the Director of Product Management at
Shopzilla Inc, where he built the company's proprietary shopping search
engine. In 2009, he won the coveted Wharton Venture Award, bestowed by
the prestigious Wharton Business School. He holds an MBA from the
Wharton Business School (University of Pennsylvania), USA, and a
Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Arizona,
Tucson-USA.
 Rahul Chari

Rahul Chari is the Chief Technology officer at PhonePe. He comes with two
decades of experience spanning embedded systems, enterprise software
development, e-commerce platforms and apps. Prior to PhonePe he was
working as the VP Engineering at Flipkart and was responsible for building
the best-in-class supply chain system for e-commerce. He joined Flipkart in
2011 through the acquisition of Mallers Inc where he served as the Chief
Technology Officer and built Mime360, their flagship product. Prior to
Mallers, Rahul was with the Data Center Business Unit at Cisco Systems
where he was part of the team that developed the market changing MDS
9000 family of SAN switches. He is named on multiple storage
virtualization related patents. Rahul holds a Masters degree in Computer
Science from Purdue University, USA and a Bachelor's degree in Computer
Engineering from Bombay (Mumbai) University, India (Gold Medalist).
 Burzin Engineer
Burzin is the Chief Reliability Officer at PhonePe. He has more than 25
years of experience in the dot-com space. During his stint at PhonePe, he
has built web scale infrastructure and led multiple engineering projects
including running and building PhonePe's web serving layer, cloud systems,
network, storage and CDN. He’s passionate about building software at scale.
Previously, he helped build Mime360, the flagship product at Mallers Inc.
He set up their web services, Internal-IT, Application Engineering, Storage
Networks and Configuration Services. While at Mallers Inc, he helped
redesign the company’s infrastructure for unprecedented growth (100% year
over). He holds a Master of Science in Computer Science from the
University of Southern California.
SERVICES OFFERED BY PHONEPE:

1. PhonePe Account (“PA”) - PhonePe Account is the account that

you create when you sign up/register with PhonePe.
2. PhonePe Pre-Paid Instrument (“PPI”, “PhonePe Wallet”) &
PhonePe Gift Card (“eGV”) ; These are Payment Instruments
issued by PhonePe as per Reserve Bank of India (“RBI”)
directives.
3. PhonePe UPI (“UPI – Unified Payment Interface”) ; Enables You
to make payment to a merchant or any person as permitted through
Your Bank account using the UPI ecosystem. 4. Mutual Fund
distribution (“MFD”); enables You to raise requests for purchase and
redemption of Your Mutual Fund units.
5. Insurance Solicitation; enables You to solicit insurance as per Your
needs. 6. External Wallets (“EW”) ; enables You to use another
authorized Payment Instrument (PPI) to make payment for goods and
services on PhonePe Platform.
7. Recharge & Bill Payments (“RBP”) ; enables You to pay Your
bills or recharge Your account with listed service providers
on PhonePe Platform.
8. Merchant Payments on PhonePe Platform (“Switch Merchants”) ; Our
in-app service that enables You to access merchant
websites/applications within PhonePe mobile application and use
PhonePe or any other Payment Instruments provided by such merchants.
9. Stores
10. PhonePe Checkout ;Enables merchants to offer Faster and
Effortless Checkout in a simple and secure manner for consumers to
improve the customer shopping experience online.
Awards & Accolades

● Excellence in WealthTech

Third ET BFSI Innovation Tribe Virtual Summit &

Awards (APAC edition)

● Telecom & Technology

 Best campaign under the Telecom & Technology category
at the IndIAA Awards 2018

● India Retail and e- Retail

PhonePe announced as a winner at 8th Annual India Retail and e- Retail Awards 2019

● IAMAI Digital Award

2019 IAMAI 9th India

Digital Awards 2019

Recruitment and selection at PhonePe; tools and techniques

My mentor set me up with a lot of things during my first week and

made an excel tracker to update all the work and KT transfer. One of
the most important things that I learned during my first month was
how the Talent Acquisition team works and the Recruitment process
at PhonePe.

Recruitment Process at PhonePe:

The recruitment process of PhonePe is very clear and up to the mark.

When the recruitment process starts, at first the HR gives an online
advertisement at various job portals like Naukri.com, Instahyre,
LinkedIn, etc. and later receives the application via e-mail and postal.
After the deadline exceeds, Recruiter tries calling all the shortlisted
candidates and the people who have applied for the job. Later if the
skill set matches according to the requirement, an interview is
scheduled. In all there are 3 rounds of an interview and for some
positions there are four rounds. PhonePe gives equal opportunity for
all the applicants, regardless of race, religion, origin, sex, age,
disability or political affiliation/influence. Recruitment and selection
are done solely based on job related criteria.

External application:

External application at PhonePe comes from Job Portals,

Recruitment Partners, Campus Placement, Advertising etc.

Advantage:
● Larger pool of candidate
● Adding fresh perspective
● Enhancing diversity
● Finding the specialized candidate
● Staying competitive

Disadvantage:
● Increased cost
● Additional training
● Adds a transition period for all employees
● Affects the employee morale
Internal Application:
Internal application at PhonePe usually comes when the existing
employees apply for the open roles. Internal application is given
utmost priority at PhonePe. Interview process is expedited for
internal application.

Advantages:
● Reduces training cost
● Boost employee morale
● Reduce job posting and screening time
● Decrease employee turnover

Disadvantages:
● Lack of fresh perspective
● Workplace jealousy
● Replacing the employee you promote/transfer

Employee Referral:

Employee referral is also a very preferred way of application at

PhonePe. HRs has to expedite the process for referral.

Recruitment Process at PhonePe:

● Identifying the hiring need

● Planning
● Sourcing
● Identifying candidate
● Recruitment
● Screening
● Interview
Selection Process at PhonePe:

● Application review
● Hiring manager
 ● Exploratory interview
● Written Test (in Tech)
● Interview (Depends on the role)
● HR interview
● Final selection
● Document submission
● Offer sent
● Background check
● Onboarding & Induction

ATS(Greenhouse)

The Applications are tracked through an ATS named GreenHouse.

Greenhouse is effectively use to screen, select and schedule
interviews:

● Requisition raising
● Recruitment proposal
● Collection of CV
● Screening of CV
● Processing for interview
● Interview (rounds of interviews depends on role)
● Finalization by HR Manager
● Offer raising
● Onboarding
Greenhouse is used to schedule interviews, select, and offer raising.
Even onboarding is also done through greenhouse. Candidate
tracking is also done through Greenhouse.
 Fig 1: Candidate tracking
You can also track your pipeline tasks through Greenhouse.

Fig 2: Tracking of the Job

To track all the candidates and pipeline we also created google sheets with
relevant information.

Fig. Pipeline Tracker for AppSec hiring

During my first couple of weeks I got training for the greenhouse and
recruitment process. Moving forward I got KT for Product Solution
Engineer and AppSec(App Security). I started sourcing and
screening through different Job portals, then I called candidates for
preliminary interviews, after that I scheduled interviews and sent
them coding tests, if they qualify then rest of the interviews are
scheduled. After shortlisting the candidate, and HR round is done,
candidate pitch is done by the senior HR and I used to shadow in
that call. By the end of the month I did had access to a few other
roles.
Chapter 3: Changes made in last 6 months

➢ Best method of getting the best talent at Phonepe is the

Employee Referral Program or getting the candidates from
Recruitment Agencies.
➢ Having too many vacancies in the market leads to fierce
competition resulting in a smaller candidate pool.
➢ Too many open positions at PhonePe results in recruiters not
having enough bandwidth to interact with the candidates
effectively.
➢ Best talent in the market is usually the Passive candidates
who are not actively looking for a job change, attracting them
is a challenge which we were not meeting effectively. ➢
Reasons for candidates dropping out their candidature are
usually other better opportunities(could be better project, hiring
experience or salary structure) and not getting the feedback on
time.
➢ Compensation structure does play a great role in the
recruitment process, with too many vacancies in technical
fields, candidates usually have 2-3 offers in hand by which
they negotiate their terms and then move on to the other
company to do the same. There’s always someone in the
market who is paying double what we’re paying.
➢ During covid times people got comfortable with WFH culture
now getting them back to office is very difficult, so yes we’re
losing many good talents to other companies who still have
WFH policy.
➢ Compensation structure at PhonePe might be competitive.
➢ Biggest challenge working with recruitment agencies is not
getting enough pipeline for the role and getting repetitive
candidates.
➢ Offer decline rate at PhonePe is 50%.
➢ Reason for the high decline rate is candidates having offers
from other big companies, projects, and work from home
culture.
My contribution to the organization

➢ Restructuring the recruitment process:

Changing the process of recruitment helped the company to
attract the best talent. Some lengthy process should be
shortened for effectiveness.
➢ Shorten the number of recruitment agencies:
During the month of August there was a massive debate on
whether or not to cut down a few recruitment agencies we
were working with. Having a lot of vendors creates confusion
and we get repetitive candidates from them.
➢ Lessen the cool down period:
In recruitment policy terms, “cool-off period” represents the
duration that a candidate is barred from re-applying at a
company where she / he was rejected. For Example if a
company have this cool-off period defined as 6 months. So
basically, it means that if you go through a company’s
recruitment process and get rejected, then you will not be
allowed to go through that company’s recruitment process
again for at least the next 6 months.
➢ Restructure the compensation structure by adding more
benefits: While I agree it is not feasible for the company to
increase their bucket when they already have competitive
compensation structure, but I do believe that there still a few
benefits could be added.
➢ Hiring more people for Talent acquisition team:
While I cannot claim that the Talent Acquisition team at
PhonePe is anyway small but adding more recruiters
would lessen the burden off.
➢ Improve the quality of interview experience:
We as recruiters try our best to provide the candidate best
interview experience but with so many open roles and
hundreds of interviews happening, there comes a time where
the interviewer becomes jaded with the process.
➢ Improve the quality of recruitment process:
We as recruiters try our best to provide the candidate best
interview experience but with so many open roles and
hundreds of candidates it becomes really difficult to provide
the candidates best personal touch.
 ➢ Quick feedback:
Best way to engage a candidate is to provide quick
feedback which often-a-times gets difficult because of not
having enough bandwidth.

Individual Growth

● I helped source for Product Solution Engineer, App security

Engineer, SDET, Product manager.
● I did end-to-end recruitment.
● Helped close 11 positions in 2 months.
● Helped in organizing two successful software
engineer hiring drives.
● Helped create data for campus recruitment.
● Helped maintain corporate relationships with
various recruitment agencies.
● Stakeholder management.
● Learned and successfully pitched offers to 4 candidates.
● Helped make competitive offers for the shortlisted candidates.