Program Manager/Category Manager

About the role

You will own the end-to-end performance of a set of lending partners and be accountable for their volumes, economics, and user journey from application to disbursal and servicing. This role requires you to act as the connective tissue between Business, Product, Technology, Operations, Risk, Compliance, Finance, and Marketing to ensure seamless execution. You are a builder who identifies broken spots in the funnel, formulates hypotheses, and drives initiatives to fix them rather than merely coordinating tasks. You will directly impact Paytm's P&L because the partners you manage contribute a meaningful share of the company's monthly disbursals. This position demands a bias for action where you turn analysis into concrete decisions with attached numbers. You will design and run experiments, read the results honestly, and use insights to reshape targeting and offer strategies. Ultimately, you will ensure that the lending portfolio operates efficiently, grows sustainably, and meets its business outcomes.

Key facts

What you'll do

Own the Annual Operating Plan (AOP) for your lending partners and drive the initiatives required to achieve month-on-month delivery, not just last-minute quarter-end adjustments.

Build forward-looking forecasts, scenario plans, and clearly define the levers available if the base case performance slips.

Own the funnel end to end, analyzing stage-wise conversion, drop-offs, turnaround times, 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, customer acquisition sources, and offer constructs behave over time, and use these insights to shape targeting and offer strategy.

Design and run controlled experiments such as A/B tests on journeys, messaging, offers, routing mechanisms, and read the results honestly, including the tests that fail.

Build and maintain the dashboards and management information systems (MIS) that the business relies on, ensuring that you and your stakeholders are always looking at current, correct, and consistent numbers.

Turn analysis into a clear recommendation where the deliverable is a decision with a number attached to it, not a deck full of charts without action.

Drive the end-to-end execution of strategic lending programs, ensuring they are delivered on time and against clearly defined business outcomes and success metrics.

Manage timelines, dependencies, risks, and escalations across cross-functional teams, keeping the critical path visible and actively unblocking blockers.

Manage partner onboarding, technology and API integrations, commercial constructs, service-level agreements, and ongoing governance with banks and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs).

Run regular business reviews with lending partners, focusing on performance, approval rates, portfolio quality, open items, and holding both sides accountable to their commitments.

Track market trends, competitor journeys, equated monthly installment (EMI) and buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) constructs, and partner ecosystem shifts, translating these observations into concrete proposals for the product and technology roadmap.

Requirements

Hold a Bachelor's degree in Business, Engineering, Finance, or a related field, with an MBA preferred as an academic qualification.

Bring 3-6 years of experience across program management, FinTech, banking, NBFC, payments, or consumer finance domains.

Possess hands-on experience in digital lending or consumer finance, where exposure to unsecured personal loans is a strong plus.

Demonstrate a working knowledge of the lending value chain, including sourcing, underwriting, KYC, disbursal, servicing, and collections, and understand how bank and NBFC partnerships operate.

Have a demonstrable track record of running cross-functional programs that shipped initiatives and moved a business metric in a measurable way.

Apply advanced Excel or Google Sheets skills, including modelling, scenario analysis, and handling large datasets to derive insights.

Use a programming language like Python or a business intelligence tool such as Looker, Tableau, MetaBase, or Superset as a plus for deeper analysis.

Conduct funnel, cohort, and experiment analysis using a structured, hypothesis-led problem-solving approach.

Be numerate and commercially literate, comfortable working with unit economics and profit and loss (P&L) logic.

Show program ownership with a strong bias for action, driving outcomes without waiting to be explicitly told what to do at every step.

Comfortably coordinate with product and technology teams on scope, sequencing, and trade-offs to keep initiatives moving.

Understand the lending and consumer finance domain, including subvention management, business reporting, and financial reconciliation.

Stay aware of the regulatory environment for digital lending in India and consider compliance in your decision-making.

Communicate excellently in writing and verbally, capable of holding a room with senior stakeholders and writing clear one-pagers that drive decisions.

Operate with high ownership and comfort with ambiguity in a fast-moving environment where priorities can shift quickly.

Nice to have

Only if the source mentions preferred items, and the source does not list any specific Nice to Have qualifications.

Practical notes

The engagement is full-time employment based in Noida, Uttar Pradesh.

The role requires 3-6 years of relevant experience.

Travel is not explicitly mentioned in the source, so no travel expectations are stated.

Visa and official application page details are not provided in the source, and therefore they are omitted.

No working hours are specified in the source, so standard full-time expectations apply.

The compensation section is omitted because the source does not specify a salary or pay range for this role.