NEW DELHI: Ola Founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal will shift his focus from day-to-day operations to building high-growth business and projects across Ola Electric and Ola businesses. “I’ll be spending more time with all engineering functions, team building, and on the product…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,” said Aggarwal in an internal note.
The Softbank-backed firm has expanded Group CFO and CFO of Ola Electric GR Arun Kumar’s role to help and support Aggarwal in day-to-day operations across the group.
Kumar had joined Ola in June last year and has over two decades of experience in finance and strategy, and has worked across various industrial sectors such as Vedanta Resources, GE and Hindustan Unilever. Aggarwal took to twitter to clarify that he is not retiring and that Kumar will help him in managing Ola’s operations. To note, Ola had a significant number of high profile exits last year.
“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.
Aggarwal’s decision to focus on the larger picture comes at a time when Ola is in a firefighting mode to meet delivery commitments of its electric scooter and assure consumers about its safety. Ola’s scooter catching fire last has emerged as a big setback for the company as well as India’s e-2W industry, forcing the government to launch an independent investigation.
Among other things, the IPO-bound firm has plans to raise funds to fuel its aggressive expansion plans, which include its on-going effort to build the world’s largest two-wheeler plant in Tamil Nadu. Aggarwal also has plans to foray into electric car space in near future.
The company recently made an investment in StoreDot, an Israeli battery technology company known for extreme fast charging (XFC) technology. The company is also giving a push to fintech business under Ola Financial.