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Ola Cabs appointed Pallav Singh as the chief executive of TaxiForSure, the rival cab aggregator it acquired in March, to consolidate and improve its efficiency as global rival Uber expands its business in India.
Arvind Singhal, the current chief executive has joined other senior executives such as chief financial officer Ganesh Venkatraman and human resources head T N Hari who have quit Ola. He quit due to personal reasons, Ola said in a statement on Wednesday. Singhal did not respond to calls for comment.
Singhal was made the top boss after its founders Aprameya Radhakrishna and G Raghunandan, quit in April, a month after selling the company to Ola for Rs 1,250 crore.
Pallav Singh, the new chief executive, was the senior vice president, New Initiatives at Ola before being elevated.
“TaxiForSure continues to operate as an independent brand with a focus on the economy cab segment. We have found significant benefit in integrating some core teams like Product and Engineering across both brands in the recent past,” said a company statement.
Last week, Ola offered an integrated app of TaxiForSure enabling customers to access cabs of both the firms.
Radhakrishna and Raghunandan sold TaxiForSure in March after struggling to raise additional capital to fund its business. The merger was also the first major consolidation of the fledgling app-based car aggregator business in India as competition intensified in the country.
Global rival has said it plans to invest $1 billion in India and China to expand its business.
Uber, which started its service in Ola’s home city Bengaluru, has committed to invest $50 million in a new technology centre in India and has expanded its operations to 18 cities across the country.
Ola, which dominates the app-based taxi aggregator space, has got personal investments from two Indian corporate honchos — Tata Sons chairman emeritus Ratan Tata and former Vodafone Global CEO Arun Sarin. Sarin also joined its board as an independent director.
Taxi4Sure has around 1,700 employees currently.
Ola has a presence of 200,000 vehicles in 100 cities across India. It has raised $800 million from venture capital investors including Japanese investment bank SoftBank.
