Program Manager/Category Manager - Lending (Personal Loans)

Role : Program Manager Function: Personal Loans, Lending Location: [Noida / Mumbai] Experience: 3–6 years About the Role: We are hiring a Program / Category Manager to help drive Paytm's Personal Loans business. You will own a set of lending partners end-to-end; their volumes, their economics and their journey and be the connective tissue between Business, Product, Technology, Operations, Risk, Compliance, Finance and Marketing. This is a builder's role, not a coordinator's. You will be expected to find growth yourself: dig into the funnel, form a view on what is broken or under-exploited, build the business case, and then drive it to launch with the teams that can make it happen. The partners in this portfolio contribute a meaningful share of Paytm's monthly disbursals, so the decisions you make show up directly in the P&L. Key Responsibilities: - Own the AOP for your lending partners and drive the initiatives needed to deliver it month on month, not just at quarter end. - Build the forward view forecasts, scenario plans and the levers available if the base case slips. - Own the funnel end to end: stage-wise conversion, drop-offs, TATs and the specific reason codes behind each leak, from offer display through KYC, e-mandate, e-sign and disbursal. - Run cohort and vintage analysis to understand how different user segments, sources and offer constructs behave over time, and use it to shape targeting and offer strategy. - Design and run experiments: A/B tests on journeys, messaging, offers and routing and read the results honestly, including the ones that fail. - Build and maintain the dashboards and MIS that the business runs on, so that you and your stakeholders are always looking at the same, current, correct numbers. - Turn analysis into a recommendation. The deliverable is a decision with a number attached to it, not a deck of charts. - Drive end-to-end execution of strategic lending programs, delivered on time and against clearly defined business outcomes. - Manage timelines, dependencies, risks and escalations across cross-functional teams; keep the critical path visible and unblock it. - Manage partner onboarding, technology and API integrations, commercial constructs, SLAs and ongoing governance with Banks and NBFCs. - Run regular business reviews with partners; performance, approval rates, portfolio quality, open items and hold both sides to commitments. - Track market trends, competitor journeys, EMI and BNPL constructs, and partner ecosystem shifts, and translate them into concrete proposals for our roadmap. Qualifications: - Bachelor's degree in Business, Engineering, Finance or a related field. MBA preferred. - 3–6 years of experience across Program Management, FinTech, Banking, NBFC, Payments or Consumer Finance. - Hands-on experience in digital lending or consumer finance; exposure to unsecured personal loans is a strong plus. - Working knowledge of the lending value chain — sourcing, underwriting, KYC, disbursal, servicing & collections and of how bank/NBFC partnerships operate. - A demonstrable track record of running cross-functional programs that shipped and moved a business metric Skills We're Looking For: Analytical - Advanced Excel / Google Sheets, modelling, scenario analysis, handling large datasets. Python or a BI tool (Looker, Tableau, MetaBase, Superset) is a plus. - Funnel, cohort and experiment analysis; structured, hypothesis-led problem solving. - Numerate and commercially literate, comfortable with unit economics and P&L logic. Execution - Program ownership with a strong bias for action; drives outcomes without waiting to be told what to do. - Comfortable coordinating with Product and Technology on scope, sequencing and trade-offs. Domain - Lending and consumer finance; subvention management; business reporting and financial reconciliation. - Awareness of the regulatory environment for digital lending in India. Personal - Excellent written and verbal communication; can hold a room with senior stakeholders and can write a clear one-pager. - High ownership and comfort with ambiguity in a fast-moving environment.