Ola CFO GR Arun Kumar’s role expanded, to assist CEO Bhavish Aggarwal

In a major development at ride-hailing giant Ola, CEO Bhavish Aggarwal will be now assisted by the group CFO GR Arun Kumar, whose role has been expanded according to an internal mail that went out last week from the company’s HR to its employees. Kumar had joined as Ola Electric CFO in May, 2021 and was later elevated to the position of group CFO.

Sources privy to the development said that the internal mail sent out by HR asked all business heads to report to Kumar instead of Aggarwal. Earlier, media reports suggested that Aggarwal was stepping back from daily operations and Kumar will now drive the daily ops at the Bengaluru-headquartered company.

Ola declined to comment on Business Today's queries on reports about Aggarwal’s stepping away from the company’s day-to-day operations.

Meanwhile, Aggarwal took to Twitter saying in his tweet that the media reports which suggested him stepping away from the operations are not true and that these reports read as if he is 'retiring.'

“Reads like I’m retiring! Not true. Arun 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!,” the Ola CEO said in his tweet.

Reads like I’m retiring! Not true. Arun 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! pic.twitter.com/rio290Pa75

— Bhavish Aggarwal (@bhash) April 12, 2022

However, sources say that Aggarwal, in his current capacity, will be more focused on scaling the electric vehicle business, along with overseeing the expansion of its Futurefoundry as well as Ola Dash, the firm's quick commerce delivery segment. This development comes at a time when the company has claimed to manufacture and sell its two-wheelers in a record time.

However, Ola's electric two-wheelers have been in the news recently for their manufacturing and design limitations, including an incident of one of its e-scooters catching fire, forcing the company to launch an independent probe to investigate the incident of March 27 in Pune.

Also, the recent incidents of EVs catching fire across various cities in India have also raised the spectre of safety concerns and the government has ordered a probe too.

“Meanwhile, Kumar, has been given the additional responsibility of handling the company's financial services arm. “Now Kumar will have to oversee commerce, auto-sales, mobility divisions too,” a source said.

Kumar joined Ola after spending more than eight years at Vedanta Group where he was working in the capacity of executive president and Group CFO.

Ola’s board recently approved the acquisition of financial services firm, Avail Finance, a reported $40 million share swap deal as a result of which Ankush Aggarwal, Bhavish’s brother, is likely to acquire a stake in the ANI Technologies, the parent company of Ola.