Ujjwal Jain, chief executive officer (CEO) of PhonePe’s stockbroking platform Share.Market and its wealth management verticals, has stepped down after a four-year stint at the Walmart-backed fintech company.
Jain announced his departure in a LinkedIn post, calling it the end of a “decade-long Chapter 1” and hinting at a fresh start. “This is not a goodbye. This is a relaunch,” he wrote.
Jain started WealthDesk in 2016, which enabled users to invest in diversified baskets of stocks and ETFs, while his other venture, OpenQ, focused on quant-led research and portfolio analytics.
In May 2022, PhonePe acquired WealthDesk and OpenQ in a deal valued at around $75 million and entered into the wealth management segment. As per the reports, WealthDesk was acquired at roughly $50 million and OpenQ at about $25 million.
As part of the transaction, Jain and his team joined PhonePe to build its investment and stockbroking platform, Share.Market, which was launched in 2023 as the company looked to diversify beyond its core payments biz.
PhonePe invested heavily in marketing to drive adoption of Share.Market. However, it has struggled to gain traction in a segment dominated by Groww, Zerodha, and Angel One, managing to just enter the top 20 stockbroking platforms with a 0.5% market share as of February 2026. A similar trend appears to be playing out in its wealth management segment.
Without disclosing his next move, Jain indicated that his next chapter will be shaped by opportunities emerging in an “AI-first world,” particularly across capital markets and wealth management.
