EXCLUSIVE | Ola Electric rejigs roles to unify operations across roles; YS Kim gets larger role

OLA Electric founder Bhavish Aggarwal.

SoftBank-backed electric vehicle (EV) start-up Ola Electric has undertaken a restructuring exercise, with a raft of new hires, in a bid to centralise and unify operations across verticals.

As part of this move, industry veteran YS Kim will take on an expanded role of leading sales, Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) and charging network. Vinay Bhopatkar, who was leading sales, Arvind Appi Raj who was the director of the environment, health and safety (EHS) team, and director Vijayanand Harish have resigned from the organisation.

An Ola Electric spokesperson confirmed the developments in an email response to Moneycontrol.

Further, it has roped in B Ganapathiraman as the new Director of Manufacturing Operations, and B Sivakumar to head EHS at Ola’s Future factory. They will be replacing Vijayanand Harish, Manufacturing Director and Aravind Appi Raj, Director EHS respectively.

This is the second such restructuring Ola has announced this year. A massive reorg plan was announced in July where it laid off around 1,000 employees when it shut down three of its businesses -- Used Cars, Cloud Kitchen and Grocery delivery, to focus on the EV business. While it laid off around 1,000 employees from the other business verticals, it had plans to hire around 800 employees for the EV business.

While there are no layoffs at the present restructuring exercise, the company has made fresh hires and is focussing on unifying its sales, quality assurance, engineering and product development teams.

As part of the new restructuring, Ola aims to build on common capabilities and synergies across functions as it strengthens its play across 2-wheeler (2W), 4-wheeler (4W), Cell R&D and manufacturing. The company aims to unify functions across and not limited to sales, quality & assurance, engineering and product development amongst others.

Prashantha Subrahmanya Galagali, previously with Mahindra Electric Mobility, has joined as Head of Supplier Quality Assurance and will be responsible for quality assurance across 2Ws and 4Ws.The company has also roped in former Mahindra and Mahindra Chief of Design - Ramkripa Ananthan to head its design function.

Ola has also hired U Venkata Phani Kumar as Group Chief Projects Officer leading manufacturing construction, previously with HCC. Also joining the team is Rafal Biszcz, who has over 16 years of experience in automotive and battery cell technology. Rafal Biszcz will oversee the Manufacturing Engineering charter, the response said.

Vinay Bhopatkar was initially responsible for deliveries at Ola, including its quick commerce vertical. Bhopatkar was shifted to the Ola Cabs division where he was heading the sales and supply division. With Ola announcing its restructuring plan, Bhopatkar moved to Ola Electric to head the sales team in May 2022.

The news of the hiring comes after a series of exits at the EV start-up.

While the company’s head of production, Nagi Reddy Satigari quit in the first week of September, Ashok Saraswat resigned as Ola Electric’s head of advanced battery engineering. This was then followed by the resignation of the senior director and business head of Ola Electric’s charging network, Yashwant Kumar, who resigned in July and immediately after that the HR Director Ranjit Kondeshan exited the firm.

In April 2022, Chief Technology Officer Dinesh Radhakrishnan and Director-Chief Engineer Zoeb Karampurwala also resigned from their posts. And, Pankaj Sharma, previous head of sales and distribution also quit the firm in January of 2022.

Ola's core ride-hailing unit is also planning to list on the stock exchanges soon, for which it raised $500 million from Warburg Pincus and Temasek, giving early backers Tiger and Matrix part-exit from their stakes in the company. While the company has hired bankers for its IPO, it hasn't disclosed by when it plans to go public.

This also comes at a time when Ola Electric has rolled out ambitious plans including manufacturing electric four-wheelers in India, which it plans to roll out in 2024.

It also launched Ola S1, its second electric two-wheeler and has set a target to produce one million electric cars, 10 million two-wheelers and 100 Gigawatt per hour (Gwh) of battery cells every year.

Ola Electric recently announced that it is reimagining Ola Futurefactory into an EV hub, which will create one million cars, 10 million 2Ws and 100 GWh of cells a year in a single site. It will be the largest EV ecosystem in the world.

During the new two-wheeler launch, the company also unveiled its research and development (R&D) centre, Ola Battery Innovation Centre (BIC). Ola Electric on July 18 announced the investment of $500 million for setting up this centre.

“We have produced our very first Lithium Ion cell and will soon be producing it in our Giga factory. We have done a lot of development testing around this and by end of 2023 we will have them in our products,” Aggarwal said.

However, data sourced from vehicle registration firm Vahan said the company's Ola S1 Pro registration fell to 9,196 units in May this year from 12,683 units in April.

It sold around 3,426 vehicles in July 2022, down 42 per cent month-on-month on chip shortage and spill-over effects of inflationary pressures.

The firm sold 5,874 two-wheelers in June, data from the industry body Federation of Automobile Dealers Association (FADA) showed on August 5.

For FY2021 Ola Electric’s losses nearly doubled to Rs 200 crore as per the company’s MCA filings. The company clocked operational revenue of only Rs 86 lakh and employee benefits made up close to 70 percent of total expenses.