Puneet Bhirani joins at Ola COO and Ola Fleet Technologies CEO

It seems like top level rejigs have become a trend at the Bengaluru based ride-hailing firm Ola.

It started in May last year when the report was released that Vishal Kaul, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the firm at that time had quit the company to join PepsiCo as the Vice President and Category Head Beverages for Indian region.

His functions were then taken over by the Senior Vice President (SVP) of the company, Pallav Singh. He then also became the interim COO of the company.

After this, there took place a series of high profile exits in the firm across 2018. Joy Bandekar, corporate president for new initiatives left and became the Founding Partner of Udaan.

Saikaran Krishnamurthy, SVP of growth, made an exit and found xto10x Technologies. Susheel Balakrishnan, Chief People Officer also left after a six-month stint.

Pallav Singh, SVP and interim COO, also left the company about a month ago to pursue his entrepreneurial aspirations, as per a Financial Express report.

The Chief Executive Officer of one of Ola’s group companies Ola Fleet Technologies (OFT) - Sandeep Divakaran - is also transferring to lead a “new initiative” with Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal.

What this new initiative is suspense that one will only come to know about in the future sometime when Aggarwal makes the announcement.

The exit of Singh and relocation of Divakaran, had left the two positions of Ola COO, and OFT CEO vacant.

To fill this position, the company has hired Puneet Bhirani to take over both the roles of managing OFT and overlooking supply and sourcing functions for Ola. Bhirani was formerly the CEO at Digital Risk, a subsidiary of US-based IT firm Mphasis.