Seattle-based remittance company Remitly Global Inc. (Nasdaq: RELY) has hired Ankur Sinha, a former Microsoft and Google executive, as the company's new chief technology officer.
Sinha was most recently an engineering director at Google, where he spent almost three years. Before that, he spent more than 12 years at Microsoft, where he was a senior director.
"From Microsoft and Google I've learned a lot of high-scale, high-performance structure you can apply at a large technology company," Sinha said. "Remitly is obviously smaller in terms of size from that perspective, but a lot of the learnings, I do think, are shared. Learnings in leadership. Learnings in how we scale systems and organizations. Learnings in agility in terms of how we drive value."
Sinha is replacing Karim Meghji, who has held the company's CTO role since October 2020, according to Remitly's website. The company said in a release Meghji is stepping into an executive advisory role.
Remitly, founded in 2011, allows customers to send and receive money abroad. Customers can send money through a bank deposit, cash pickup, mobile money and home delivery. Remitly in 2020 launched a banking service for immigrants called Passbook that doesn't require a Social Security number. The company went public on the Nasdaq in September.
In its third quarter 2021 earnings results from November, Remitly posted $121.2 million in revenue, a 69% year-over-year increase, but net losses were $13 million, compared with $2.4 million in Q3 2020. The company said much of the losses were due to its Pledge 1% commitment, a philanthropic effort designed to get early stage companies to give back to nonprofits.
Sinha said talking with Remitly co-founder and CEO Matt Oppenheimer and discovering Remitly's goal of providing financial services to immigrants were important factors in drawing him away from Google.
"I also felt that I could bring my experience of leadership skills and agility that I learned at Microsoft and Google to help further Remitly's vision and drive them towards that mission of providing peace of mind to our customers," Sinha said.
