Ola Names Former Unilever Executive Hemant Bakshi As CEO

Ola's parent company, ANI Technologies Pvt., named former Unilever executive Hemant Bakshi as its next chief executive officer, with incumbent Bhavish Aggarwal stepping away from his role as the mobility giant undergoes a streamlining of operations.

Bakshi was the executive vice president of the marketplace and chairperson of Unilever Indonesia. He joined Ola and moved back to India around four months ago.

Aggarwal said he would continue to stay "fully involved" with the business. "There is a partnership between Hemant and I. He brings the strategy and operations, while I am the proverbial entrepreneur, thinking about newer ideas and innovating," the co-founder said at a press conference in Bengaluru on Thursday.

The company is reorganising into three business units—ride hailing and mobility, financial services, and logistics and e-commerce—to "allow focused management, streamlined operations, and more agility," according to a statement on Thursday.

In the mobility segment, the company will focus on premiumisation to monetise further, while it will also leverage electrification to offer affordable rides in the two-wheeler segment using its own vehicles to increase penetration. It is seeking to expand multi-city Prime+ offering with a loyalty programme and also onboard luxury cars.

Ola will also electrify its three-wheeler autos and four-wheeler cab offerings, Aggarwal told reporters.

In the financial services segment, Ola has about 60 lakh monthly active users availing products and services, such as payments, lending, asset financing and insurance. The company will increase focus on its asset finance vertical with bank tie-ups, better insurance and process experience, with a focus on partners and riders.

The company is also now introducing a third segment—logistics and e-commerce—which aims to leverage the government-backed Open Network for Digital Commerce.

"The logistics presence, combined with our large customer base, financial services offerings, our gig worker platform and technology capabilities, will allow us to leverage digital public infrastructure that is being built," it said. "ONDC is a real game-changing opportunity for us."

Ola also said its mobility business hit Ebitda-level profitability in the last financial year.

ANI Technologies' standalone earnings, which takes into account only Ola's mobility business, posted "segment-adjusted" earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation of about Rs 250 crore, the company said. "We're one of the few consumer internet businesses in India to be profitable at this level."

However, NDTV Profit had reported earlier that the company's ride-hailing business posted a revenue of Rs 1,987.5 crore, up from Rs 1,220.2 crore in fiscal 2022. Loss from the business stood at Rs 1,082 crore, narrowing significantly from Rs 3,082 crore.

Aggarwal said that Ebitda is the "right metric" to judge Ola's mobility business and that most consumer-tech business also offer the same metric.