BackRajiv Bansal, focus of Infosys row, resigns as Ola CFO
Over the course of the past 12 months since Rajiv Bansal joined Ola from Infosys, the unicorn start-up has struggled to attract new investors
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Bengaluru: Ride-hailing service Ola’s chief financial officer (CFO) and former Infosys veteran Rajiv Bansal has resigned, according to at least three people familiar with the matter.
Ola has named operations head Pallav Singh as its interim CFO, these people said, on the condition of anonymity.
Ola’s chief marketing officer Raghuvesh Sarup has also resigned from the company, the people mentioned above said.
An Ola spokesperson declined to comment.
Bansal, who is currently at the centre of a separate controversy that is brewing at his former company Infosys over his severance payout, did not respond to calls and text messages sent to his mobile. Mint had first sent queries to Bansal on his departure from Ola on 1 February.
Bansal’s departure, though abrupt, does not come as a complete surprise internally, according to the people mentioned above. Over the course of the past 12 months or so since Bansal joined Ola, the SoftBank-backed unicorn start-up has struggled to attract new investors who have been willing to pump money into the cab hailing firm at its preferred valuation. Ola last raised funds at a peak valuation of $5 billion.
On 3 February, Mint first reported that US-based investment firm Vanguard Group has slashed the valuation of its stake in Ola (ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd) by over 40%.
Bansal is currently at the centre of another controversy that is brewing at Infosys over reports of discord between the company’s board and its founders led by N.R. Narayana Murthy.
In May last year, Mint had also reported that Infosys paid Rs23.02 crore severance pay, salary and other benefits to Bansal in 2015, which at the time drew criticism from proxy advisory firms and analysts for Infosys for awarding an unusually high compensation to an outgoing executive.
Mint also reported in September that Infosys has stopped the remaining instalments of the severance payment of Rs17.38 crore that was promised to Bansal after some of the company’s founders expressed their unhappiness with the decision.
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