Ola Hires Saikiran Krishnamurthy As Senior Vice President

Homegrown cab aggregator Ola has hired former Flipkart executive Saikiran Krishnamurthy as their new senior vice president to drive the company’s growth forward. Krishnamurthy was appointed as the chief operating officer of Flipkart in 2015 and later as the head of the ecommerce company’s supply chain vertical including eKart and Jeeves.

Krishnamurthy was one of the senior executives who stepped down after Kalyan Krishnamurthy took over as the chief executive officer of Flipkart. He worked as a director and operations head in the management consultancy firm McKinsey for 15 years before joining Flipkart. An IIM Ahmedabad graduate, Krishnamurthy was also responsible for McKinsey’s implementation program along with leading its chemicals and agriculture practice in India. At Ola, he will head the newly created marketplace and spearhead new growth initiatives, according to a news daily.

Ola also witnessed some top level changes in January this year when Pepsi India veteran Vishal Kaul joined the company as the chief operating officer. Sundeep Sahni, who handled new initiatives such as Ola Shuttle, Ola Auto, Ola e rikshaw and Ola Kali Peeli quit the company in December 2016. The head of the luxury cab services, Ola Lux, Abhimanyu Rawal also put down his papers around the same time to join a US retail firm. Harish Abhichandani, who quit the ecommerce firm, Flipkart, joined the cab hailing company as its chief financial officer recently.

Earlier this month Ola secured a loan of Rs. 1000 crores from India’s fifth largest private sector bank, Yes Bank, to expand its consumer vehicles fleet. The company also raised close to $ 36 million from the New York based hedge fund, Tekne Capital Management in August by allocating 1,71,173 fully and compulsorily convertible preference shares at Rs. 13,521 apiece. Neither the parent company ANI Technologies Pvt., Ltd., nor Ola have commented on the new recruitment.