Ride-hailing app Ola will see yet another high profile exits as the SoftBank-backed company gears up for a potential $1 billion initial public offering in the next few months. Ola’s Chief Financial Officer Swayam Saurabh and Chief Operating Officer Gaurav Porwal will be leaving the organisation, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters.
While Saurabh took charge as CFO only in April 2021 this year, Porwal was the COO of global mobility at Ola since last year, with interim charges of Ola Foods and Ola Fleets. Both these exits reportedly happened in the last week. This is latest in a series of top executives who have quit in the last two years. Other exits in the recent past include Ola’s founding member Pranay Jivrajka, Ola Electric’s co-founders Ankit Jain and Anand Shah. Nitin Gupta, who was the CEO of Ola Financial Services, also resigned last year, while Ola’s chief business officer Sanjay Bhan, also left the company in less than a year.
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The company, backed by SoftBank Group Corp. and Tiger Global Management, has also picked Morgan Stanley for the listing, said the people, who asked not to be named as the information is private. The Bangalore-based startup could seek a valuation of more than $8 billion in the IPO and could lodge a filing as soon as October, Bloomberg reported in August. The company recently announced the launch of its vehicle commerce platform that will enable customers to buy new and pre-owned vehicles through the Ola app. The company is also looking at scaling the reach of the platform — Ola Cars — to 100 cities by the next year
