Ola set for recast on road to profit
The company to get new COO soon
Bengaluru-based ride-hailing unicorn Ola is set to name Vijay Ghadge chief operating officer (COO), two people familiar with the development said. The position has been vacant ever since Vishal Kaul left the company in May. Ola CoFounder and Chief Technology Officer Ankit Bhati is currently filling in as COO.
Ghadge, a vice-president at Ola, is among the key members in Founder and Chief Executive Officer Bhavish Aggarwal’s team, along with Bhati and Pallav Singh. He initially reported to Kaul. But after Kaul’s departure, the stature of the former Vulcan executive has been growing in the firm.
Ghadge’s appointment is likely to be central to a major restructuring at Ola. Sources suggest there could be a churn in staff, affecting around 40 per cent in the organisation. There are talks of shifting some of the employees to Foodpanda, which was acquired by Ola in December 2017 in an all-stock deal. Many others are likely to be moved to different roles cutting across departments, according to one of the persons quoted above.
Hiring, however, will continue in the foreign markets. Ola’s current operational structure, based on a city-level hierarchy, will also be done away with, it is learnt. At present, the Ola universe divides the country into six major cities, while the rest of the market is called emerging India. In a shift, Ola is trying to create a central leadership, similar to the Uber model. The company is now split into four regions — North, South, East, and West. Hyderabad is attached to the East and not the South because Ola needs a highearning city in the East to explain its presence in that zone.
FULL THROTTLE
■ New structure of Ola will be centralised, just like Uber
■ The markets were originally split into top five cities and emerging India
■ Now it will be split into North, South, East, and West
■ Hyderabad is part of the East zone
■ Some city heads will become region heads
■ Some will be hived off to Foodpanda
■ Some will be moved sideways into roles, most probably, at Ola HQs in Bengaluru