Ola strengthens leadership team across lending, e-mobility business

Ride-hailing platform Ola on Tuesday announced key leadership appointments across its financial services, electric mobility and vehicles sales businesses.

P V Harinarayan has joined as vice-president (lending) at Ola Financial Services, while V Ramesh has joined as head (operations) at Ola Futurefactory, according to a statement.

Priteesh Mahajan has been named as head of two-wheeler programme management and product planning at Ola Electric, it added.

Ola said the appointments are a continuation of its drive to attract the best global talent to "realise its vision of New Mobility which encompasses New Mobility Services".

"We're ushering in the era of New Mobility and continue to attract the best talent from around the world to build it out at scale," Ola founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal said.

These additions to the leadership team add significant experience and diverse skills to Ola in key areas, including lending, production and quality as well as engineering management, he added.

"I look forward to collaborating with them to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable mobility," he said.

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Harinarayan brings close to two decades of experience in the banking and fintech domain, having previously been the CEO of Simple Pay, where he was responsible for building a high-tech purpose led digital lending NBFC. He has previously worked with organisations such as Bajaj Finserv, Barclays and ICICI Bank.

Ramesh joins as the VP and head of operations at the Ola Futurefactory and will be responsible for efficient operations and instilling best practices in safety, quality and productivity, the statement said.

He brings with him over three decades of experience in the areas of production, quality, design and development, having previously worked at Toyota, Maruti Suzuki, Lucas TVS and Tata Hitachi, it added.

Priteesh Mahajan has joined as the head of two-wheeler product planning and programme management at Ola Electric and will be responsible for overseeing the engineering programme management for the company's two-wheeler programme that includes both the current line-up as well as future products, the company said.

With an experience of over two decades, Mahajan joins Ola from ABB where he managed global and local businesses as the head of the global instrumentation business.

In the past few months, Ola has seen a number of exits of senior executives, including that of Swayam Saurabh (Ola Chief Financial Officer) and Gaurav Porwal (Chief Operating Officer) and Sandeep Chowdhury (General Counsel). These exits come ahead of Ola's plans to go in for an initial public offering (IPO).

In October, Ola had also restructured the organisation and expanded roles for some of its top leaders.

The Bengaluru-based company has made many appointments as well, including that of Arun Sirdeshmukh (Ola Cars CEO) and Vinay Bhopatkar (head of delivery business).

Ola, in its statement, said it has also accelerated hiring across all levels to build a deep bench strength of talent and leadership pipeline.