Following in the footsteps of Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, Indian electric vehicle entrepreneur Bhavish Aggarwal — founder of multinational ride-sharing Ola Cabs — said he would step back from day-to-day operations to focus more on the engineering functions, team building, and products, according to a Moneycontrol report.
The report highlighted that the Group CFO of Ola and CFO of Ola Electric, GR Arun Kumar, who joined the company less than a year ago, would now drive day-to-day operations across the group — making him the most powerful executive after Aggarwal at Ola.
This came at a time when the company’s electric two-wheeler arm, Ola Electric, was recently under fire over quality issues. In the past six months, many senior-level employees have exited the company for unknown reasons.
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"I’ll be spending more time with all engineering functions, team building, and on the product. I’ll also be increasing my focus on our longer-term strategic projects, including new 2W products, our car project, innovations in quick commerce, electrifying ride-hailing, our cell R&D and factory, international expansion, and building out our Pune tech center and the Futurefoundry UK, and more," Aggarwal said in an internal note seen by Moneycontrol.
This sounds similar to Musk's point of view. In 2017, the Tesla CEO shared that he spends almost 80% of his time on engineering and designing products, and a mere 20% is devoted to other things.
Often comes as a surprise when people learn that 80% of my time is on engineering/design and just 20% on other stuff https://t.co/T9yLcg9owU
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2017
Ola was last valued at $7.3 billion when it raised $139 million in its Series J round. The company rivals the likes of Uber Technologies Inc. (NYSE:UBER) in India, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.
Photo: Courtesy of Ola
