Ola Founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal will be stepping away from day-to-day operations of many of the SoftBank-backed mobility firm’s core businesses, according to an internal note. He will instead focus on the engineering, product and team-building of businesses like quick commerce and electric vehicles (EV).In the note, Aggarwal said that he is expanding Ola group's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Arun GR’s role to help him drive the day-to-day operations across the group.
"I’ll be spending more time with all engineering functions, team building, and on the product,” said Aggarwal in the internal note. “I’ll also be increasing my focus on our longer-term strategic projects including new 2W products, our car project, innovations in quick commerce, electrifying ride-hailing, our cell R&D and factory, international expansion, and building out our Pune tech centre and the Futurefoundry UK.”
An email query to Ola seeking comment wasn’t answered immediately.
However, Aggarwal on Tuesday tweeted that he is not retiring as has been portrayed by some media reports.
“Reads like I’m retiring! Not true. Arun (GR) is a great leader & he’ll help me manage Ola’s ops. We will accelerate ambitious new projects like our car, cell, gigafactory etc. & deepen focus on tech & engineering. More soon Doubling down on building the future here in India, at Ola!,” Aggarwal tweeted.
Last year, Ola expanded its leadership team with the appointment of two chief financial officers. G R Arun Kumar joined as the Group CFO for Ola and CFO for Ola Electric, while Swayam Saurabh came in as CFO for Ola’s mobility, financial services and foods businesses.
G R Arun Kumar brings in more than two decades of experience in finance and strategy. This includes managing business growth and turnaround, large scale debt and equity capital market benchmark transactions, governance and reporting and compliance.
He had worked across varied consumer and industrial sectors in both corporate multinationals as well as entrepreneur-led global companies, including Vedanta Resources, GE and Hindustan Unilever.
Kumar joined the Ola leadership team at a time when Ola Electric is racing ahead to build the world’s largest two-wheeler factory which will also co-locate key critical suppliers in two supplier parks at the 500-acre site in Tamil Nadu, India.
"Arun joined Ola a year ago and through the last year, he’s been extremely impactful,” said Aggarwal in the note. “As CFO, leading the entire manufacturing, supply chain, S&OP, construction for Ola Electric, working with everyone across mobility, auto retail, quick commerce and also running OFS as interim CEO, he has been very effective.”
These developments have taken place at a time when Ola scooter recently caught fire in Pune and the company is in conversations with investors to raise a fresh round of funding. Many customers have been complaining about the scooters which have led to wider scrutiny of electric vehicles.
Ola Electric is ramping up its core R&D in advanced cell chemistry & manufacturing as well as other battery technologies and new energy systems. For this, it is scouting for opportunities around the world for strategic investments into companies focused on advanced cell chemistry research as well as other battery technologies. This will enable the company to provide higher density and higher battery performance for its upcoming range of two and four wheeler EVs.
It recently made an investment in an Israeli battery technology company StoreDot, a pioneer in batteries with extreme fast charging (XFC) technology. The investment in StoreDot is the first of several global strategic investments planned by Ola Electric as it looks to ramp up its core R&D in advanced cell chemistry & manufacturing as well as other battery technologies and new energy systems.
The company also recently inducted onto its Board Dr. Prabhakar Patil, former Chief Executive Officer of LG Chem Power. Aggarwal said the firm has already applied for the government of India’s $2.4 billion PLI (Production-Linked Incentive) scheme for developing advanced cells. The firm will set up a cutting edge cell manufacturing facility with up to 50GWh capacity in India. Dr Prabhakar’s expertise will help it accelerate this process of bringing indigenously designed and manufactured cells to the market.
Mobility firm Ola is also making a broader push into the fintech space as it looks to build a mobility-focused financial services business under Ola Financial. It recently signed an agreement to acquire neo bank Avail Finance which provides financial services to the blue-collared workforce and has over 6 million users. Avail Finance is a company founded by Aggarwal’s brother Ankush Aggarwal. Ola is acquiring it in a share swap deal.
Last year in December, IPO-bound mobility platform Ola raised about $139 million from a few investors including IIFL, Edelweiss, and Sunil Munjal-led Hero Enterprise at a valuation of about $7.3 billion, according to regulatory documents. Ola had also said it has successfully raised $500 million via a Term Loan B (TLB) from marquee international institutional investors. But this term loan has no impact on the valuation of Ola.
Early this year, Ola Electric, the ride-hailing firm's electric vehicle arm, raised over $200 million from Tekne Private Ventures, Alpine Opportunity Fund, Edelweiss and others. The latest round valued the company at $5 billion, an increase from its previous valuation of $3 billion.
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