Ola’s COO Arun Srinivas and senior VP Sanjiv Saddy quit

Two senior executives Arun Srinivas, COO and global chief marketing officer, and Sanjiv Saddy, senior vice president at Ola, have put in their papers. The duo joins the list of many key executives who left the ride-hailing firm in the past 8-10 months.

Early this year, Naroo Krishnan, head of products at Ola Mobility and Sanjay Kharb, vice president for engineering at Ola, moved from the company. Recently, Ola Financial Services chief executive Nitin Gupta also resigned. 

Confirming the development to Entrackr, one of the Ola spokesperson said, “Arun Srinivas, Chief Sales & Marketing Officer and Sanjiv Saddy, SVP- Corporate Affairs, are moving on to pursue other opportunities outside of Ola.”

Srinivas’ resignation came as a surprise as he had joined the companyas COO in June 2019 to head the Indian business and lead the marketing, revenue, and all mobility categories globally for the company. He left the advisory role at WestBridge Capital to join Ola. 

Saddy’s stint at Ola continued only for eight months. He was a former Flipkart’s executive and joined the SoftBank-backed firm in December to drive relationships with key authorities including government agencies. Previously, he also served Tata Communications and Emaar MGF Land among others.

Resignation of two key executives has come at a time when Ola has been grappling with raking in demands post Covid-19 induced lockdown. According to industry estimates, Ola has hardly gained 20-25% of its peak volume. To cope up with the impact of a pandemic, it laid off 1400 employees or around 35% of its total workforce in May.

To ramp up its electric scooter play, the Bengaluru-based firm recently acquired Amsterdam-based electric scooter manufacturer - Etergo. The company had also allotted over 500 crore worth new shares to its co-founders Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati. Entrackr had exclusively reported about the new share allotment to both.