PayU India cofounder Nitin Gupta, who joined Ola Financial Services (OFS) in December 2017, has stepped down as its CEO, according to an email sent by Ola co-founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal to employees on Tuesday. “Nitin is a solid entrepreneur and in his two-plus years with us, has built a great foundation for our OFS business,” Aggarwal wrote in the email. OFS, which operates OlaMoney, will now be led by Ola’s Group CFO and interim UK operations head Harish Abhichandani as its interim CEO as well. Abhichandani was former CFO of Tata Teleservices and Flipkart before joining Ola around August 2017. “Harish has successfully donned the business hat as the Head of our UK operations as well in the past, in addition to the CFO role and I’m looking forward to working with him,” Aggarwal said in the email seen by Financial Express Online.
Moreover, OFS also raised over Rs 200 crore from Matrix Partners and Falcon Edge as the company aims to grow its financial services business this year apart from cab-booking business, a person aware of the development told Financial Express Online. However, an Ola official denied confirming the fundraising.
Ola had launched wallet app OlaMoney back in 2015 to take on players such as Paytm, FreeCharge, PhonePe etc. for payments, recharges, money transfers, and other services. Ola had last year in November reportedly moved the financial services arm out of the parent entity ANI Technologies to expand its offerings beyond the core business of transportation.
“The financial services space in India and in our global markets is significantly underserved due to weak distribution, low trust, and complicated products. We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to change this with the reach and capabilities of our core ridesharing platform,” said Aggarwal. Ola is betting of pushing its financial services amid Covid times as the “need for product innovations in this space is even more relevant”.
