Ola interim COO and founding team member Pallav Singh resigns; may start up soon
Pallav Singh, one of the founding members of Ola, has resigned from the company, a highly-placed source told YourStory. One of the oldest employees of the ride-hailing company, Pallav was serving as interim COO since May 2018, when Vishal Kaul had moved on from the company.
Pallav has served in key positions in Ola, including as the interim CFO from February 2017 to May 2018, after Rajiv Bansal resigned.
An IIT-Bombay graduate, Pallav along with Pranay Jivrajka, who is CEO of Foodpanda, had joined Ola Co-founders Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati in 2012.
Pallav's move out of Ola has been in the works for a while, the source said, and added he may start up soon.
Over 2017-2018, Ola witnessed some high-profile exits, including Chief People Officer Susheel Balakrishnan, Senior Vice President for Growth Saikiran Krishnamurthy, and Corporate President for New Initiatives Joy Bandekar.
The ride-hailing firm has already raised $74 million led by Steadview Capital as a part of the round. The other tranches will be announced in the coming quarters. The planned $2 billion funding will be deployed towards expanding the reach of electric vehicles, expanding and growing Foodpanda, and bringing in a stronger focus on international markets.
In 2018, the company focused on its international expansion and food delivery platform Foodpanda, which it had acquired in December 2017. Ola had raised $1.2 billion in 2017 led by Softbank and has, since then, left no stone unturned to capture new markets. Last year it forayed into international markets, starting with Australia and moving on to the UK and New Zealand.
The ride-hailing company has a presence across over 11 categories in 110 cities in India and claims to have over 125 million users in the country. The team claims to have over one million driver-partners in India and on an aggregate basis, claims to serve as many as a billion rides annually through its platform.
