Amidst the rumors of expanding its business to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, Ola has finally appointed its chief finance officer (CFO). The company has announced former eKart Logistics executive Harish Abhichandani as its new CFO.
The position of the chief finance officer was vacant at Ola since February this year. Rajiv Bansal, Infosys veteran who was brought in to Ola as a CFO, left the position just within six months of his appointment. After Bansal’s departure, the company’s head of operations Pallav Singh was acting as the interim CFO.
Harish Abhichandani’s LinkedIn profile suggests that he started his new role as a CFO at Ola earlier this month. Prior to that, he was with Flipkart’s logistics unit eKart Logistics, which he joined in February last year. Before eKart, he was with Tata Teleservices and Oman-based Omar Zawawi Establishment.
The appointment of new CFO comes at a time when the company is looking to raise new funding round. As we reported earlier, Ola is currently in talks with China-based Tencent and US-based Microsoft for a new funding round.
It recently raised Rs 231 crore in a new funding round from New York-based hedge fund Tekne Capital Management. Under Rajiv Bansal, the company had managed to raise more than Rs 21,000 crore ($330 million). SoftBank was pumping so much money in the company that it had to turn down investment of $1 billion last year.
Ola was fearing that the Japanese investor would gain excessive control of the company. Thus, the company altered its articles of association, with addition that Softbank or any of its affiliates would need the consent of the founders and the board in order to purchase shares from other investors in Ola.
The appointment also comes at a crucial time when Ola is looking to expand its operations to other countries, starting from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. It posted a job opening for these two countries on its LinkedIn page, looking for operations expert in Dhaka and Colombo.
In India, Ola is tied up in an intense battle with the global cab-hailing leader Uber, for a bigger market share in India. Ola is coming up with offers and discounts to restrain users from shifting services, and offering more incentives to drivers, resulting massive cash burn rate.