Online taxi hailing service Ola on Thursday announced the appointment of Infosys veteran Rajiv Bansal as its chief financial officer.
Bansal will be part of Ola’s core leadership team and will join the company in January, 2016. Mitesh Shah, who is currently the CFO, will lead strategic finance initiatives as part of Rajiv’s team, going forward, the company said in a statement.
Bhavish Aggarwal, Co-founder and CEO, Ola said, “Rajiv’s understanding and expertise in the finance domain is extremely valuable for us at this juncture of growth. His experience of being at the helm of finance for one of India’s most respected companies will help us in adopting best practices and in realising our mission of building mobility for a billion people. I’m looking forward to working with Rajiv as we scale Ola to newer heights in the time to come!”
Bansal has over 21 years of experience. He joined Infosys as manager of finance in 1999. Prior to becoming the CFO, Bansal was vice president and head of finance.
Before joining Infosys, Bansal worked in different capacities at Tata Technologies, Cable & Wireless, and ABB.
Rajiv is a chartered accountant and cost accountant by profession. He holds a bachelor’s qualification in commerce from Calcutta University, India. He is a gold medalist and stood third in the Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India (ICWAI).
Earlier in July, Ola had appointed Sundeep Sahni as its vice-president of New Inititatives. Sahni was the managing director of e-commerce venture Lazada Indonesia. During the same time, it had roped in Arun Sarin, former CEO of Vodafone Group on its Board as an Independent Director.
The company last week had raised $500 million as Series F funding. The funds have been raised from a group of investors including Baillie Gifford, Falcon Edge Capital, Tiger Global, SoftBank Group, DST Global and Didi Kuaidi, China’s largest taxi hailing service. Ola will use these funds to further accelerate its growth in the Indian market. While Ola aims to clock 3 million booking requests a day by April 2016, a three-time increase from the current levels, its competitor Uber aims to clock 1 million rides a day during the same period.
