Ola HR head under scanner for corrupt practices involving millions of dollars

Indian ride-hailing major Ola has fired its head of human resources and chief administrative officer Yugantar Saikia for alleged involvement in corrupt practices and pocketing millions of dollars.

Saikia has been with the Bengaluru-based company since January 2015. The development was first reported by FactorDaily, which has cited the versions of various anonymous sources.

Following the fraud, Ola has set up an investigation team to unearth details about allegedly favours passed on to vendors in exchange for personal kickbacks, which is reported to be in several million USD. Besides, the other allegations include favouring suppliers in procurement, administration and IT.

Entrackr’s queries regarding the alleged corruption didn’t elicit any response from Ola’s co-founder Bhavish Aggarwal at the time of publishing this report.

The company has also roped in one of the ‘Big Four’ accounting firms to investigate the matter. Saikia is an alumnus of XLRI Jamshedpur and previously worked with California-based software company FICO as senior director, American Express, and Ernst & Young.

The report mentions that Saikia had resigned from the company with end-March as his last day of work. However, the company administration terminated his contract effective from the day and seized his laptop.

Meanwhile, Saikia feigns an ignorance towards any such investigation against him by Ola and also said that he hasn’t been notified of any such allegations.

Similar cases have been reported earlier from the company when its employees were found involved in wrong practices.

Last August, Bengaluru’s Central Crime Branch police arrested a software development engineer working at Ola’s head office at Koramangala, for the cybercrime. The software engineer had reportedly gained access to the Aadhaar database and extracted confidential details.

Ola had raised about $2 billion in October last year from a consortium of investors including Softbank and Tencent.  Two months later it bought Foodpanda India and made its re-entry into food delivery space.