Ola Electric’s chief business officer, Sanjay Bhan, who joined the company in December 2019 to lead its marketing and sales, has quit, sources told ET Prime on Monday on condition of anonymity. Bhan’s departure comes as a huge setback to India’s most valuable electric-vehicle startup since he was entrusted with the challenging task of onboarding dealer partners in 2020 as Ola Electric readies for a big-bang launch of its commercial operations next year.
As an automobile industry veteran who spent three decades at Hero Motocorp before quitting the two-wheeler maker as its head of sales, after sales, and parts, Bhan’s quick exit from the startup, valued at INR 7,490 crore ($1 billion), comes as a surprise to industry watchers.
Earlier, in July 2019 Ola Electric co-founder Anand Shah had left the company’s day-to-day operations to assume a part-time role. Meanwhile, a number of senior executives have been transferred from Ola Cabs into the electric-mobility project. For instance, Sandeep Divakaran, who was earlier the vice-president of strategic alliances at Ola Cabs, is currently heading strategy at Ola Electric. Similarly, Sathya Narayanan Nagarajan, who was the senior director of engineering at Ola Cabs, is now heading software engineering and artificial intelligence at Ola Electric.
Though there have been several top-level hires recently from the automobile industry, the Bhavish Aggarwal-promoted Bengaluru-based startup still needs to quickly fill up key leadership positions to execute its ambitious plans.
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