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Rakesh Deshmukh, who served as the CEO of PhonePe’s subsidiary Indus Appstore, has stepped down from his role in the company.

After nearly 10 years at the company’s helm, Deshmukh posted on LinkedIn on December 30 that he would be taking a moment to recharge and prepare for his journey ahead. His next moves remain unclear.

Queries sent to PhonePe remained unanswered at the time of publishing this story. It will be updated to reflect the company’s response.

In 2013, Deshmukh, along with Akash Dongre and Sudhir Bangarambandi, started the Indus Appstore (formerly IndusOS)—an indigenous app store that allows developers to offer localised solutions to Indian users. The company was acquired by PhonePe in May 2022.

Following its acquisition, Indus Appstore revealed its latest offering in September—a “Make in India” app store attuned to Indian audiences.

At the time, about 41 apps had signed up to be listed on the Indus Appstore, including the likes of Microsoft, Mamaearth, Dream11, ShareChat, and CoinDCX among others, Sameer Nigam said at YourStory‘s startup-tech summit TechSparks 2023 in Bengaluru.

He added that PhonePe had closed a major deal with an Android phone maker.

The Indus Appstore developer platform will be free for the first year, and the fintech will not charge developers any platform fee or commission for in-app payments. Further, the developers will be allowed to use any payment gateway of their choice, Nigam said at the launch.