Ola, India’s biggest cab aggregator, launched an internal investigation against Human Resources Head and Chief Administrative Officer Yugantar Saikia. According to sources, the fraud amounts to millions of dollars and the investigation will include a review of nearly 1000 employees Saikia has hired. The cab aggregator company also hired one of the ‘Big Four’ audit firms to lead the internal probe and help with the investigation.
FactorDaily first reported, Saikia allegedly favored certain vendors and accepted kickbacks from them in return. Sources further claimed, Saikia’s laptop, documents and several other items have been seized for the investigation and he has been asked not to report for work. However, Saikia told FactorDaily he had not been “notified” about any such action by the company.
The report further claims, Saikia received kickbacks from employment agency as well and the fraud must have been going on for at least 2 years. According to one person cited in FactorDaily, “ I estimate annual monies (sic) earned through recruitment alone to be at least Rs. 5-6 crores. And, this is just the fee paid to an outfit created for the purpose.”
Another source added, “An investigation is ongoing, the scope of the fraud goes beyond just recruitment, it includes procurement, administration and IT.” As a part of this cleanup, a review and overhaul of processes are also underway. Ola’s spokesperson confirmed the latest development and said, “There is an internal investigation which is currently on and one cannot give further details at the moment.”
Saikia, who was one of cofounder Bhavish Aggarwal’s key executives at the company, has already quit the firm and his last day was supposed to be the end of March. Saikia joined Ola in February 2015 to head the Human Resources department. Since then, Ola has raised over $2 billion in fresh funding and grown its fleet seventeen times to 700,000 vehicles including auto rickshaws.
Founded in 2011 by Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, Ola currently has a user base of 125 million across 110 cities in India and employees over 6000 people now.
