Bhavish Aggarwal's Inner Circle: The Key People Driving Ola Electric

Can you name the people behind Ola Electric? Beyond Bhavish Aggarwal, not many names come to mind.

Ola, a brand valued at around $9 Bn, spans across Ola Consumer (formerly Ola Cabs) at $2 Bn, Ola Electric at close to $6 Bn, and Ola Krutrim at $1 Bn. Yet, aside from CEO Bhavish Aggarwal, and perhaps Ramkripa Ananthan head of vehicle design and Vishal Chaturvedi, business head of Ola cells who appeared at the Ola Sankalp 2024, there aren’t many names that have made it to the headlines.

At Ola Electric, for instance, the organisational structure is deep even with several decision-making layers. That’s not a surprise given the breadth and depth of Ola Electric’s operations.

The company is looking to create a vertically integrated EV stack and as such there are three major components — manufacturing, battery or cell manufacturing and EV infrastructure such as charging stations.

Away from the limelight, several noted industry players have come on board to direct the company in the post-IPO world. And it’s not just about names, but how critical these functions are if Ola Electric has to prove the naysayers wrong.

So, in that sense, these leaders will have their tasks cut out.

Ola Electric’s hiring strategy seemingly revolves around bringing in experts for its diverse operations, focusing on EV manufacturing, cell production, charging infrastructure, and R&D.

With subsidiaries in Europe, the UK, and the US, Ola Electric is positioning itself as a major and resourceful player in the global EV race, while its domestic production arm, Ola Cell Technologies, aims to reduce import costs and secure supply chain independence.

Still, the company’s journey has faced some hurdles. As several of its key executives have joined in the last two years, frequent executive exits have raised concerns about its long-term stability. That’s not surprising given the relatively young age of Ola Electric overall.

Furthermore, while Ola Electric IPO was made a huge success by cutting down its valuation by 30%, the real problems of investors in terms of earning per share, EBITDA, and P/E ratio continue to haunt the company. And, this has started reflecting on the stock markets too

Soon after its flat listing in the first half of August, the stock hit an all-time high on August 20 when it was trading at 157.53. In less than two weeks of listing, Ola Electric stock price had more than doubled, but now the stock is settling close to the INR 110 mark, over the potential long path to profitability.

Despite impressive infrastructure, which includes 250 hypercharger stations across 17 states, 870 experience centres, cell manufacturing, the largest two-wheeler manufacturing capability in India and its technological prowess with 88 patents and 217 patent applications, Ola Electric has yet to present a profitable equation to investors.

Before we delve into who heads what, it’s important to understand the organisation structure.

Over the past few years, Ola Electric has brought on Shaun William Calvert, former deputy CEO of Vietnam’s Vinfast to oversee Ola FutureFactory. Calvert is responsible for leading a team of 874 women workers to keep things running smoothly at the core manufacturing unit for Ola Electric.

Then, there’s Hyun Shik Park, previously head of cell operations at LG’s so-called Mother Factory at Ochang in South Korea. Park now leads the Ola Cells Gigafactory and even earns more than Aggarwal, showing just how critical he is to the company’s future.

While the gross salary of Aggarwal was INR 2.99 Cr in FY24, Park earned INR 8.7 Cr in FY24, the highest among senior management in the company and its subsidiaries. Additionally, Park received 17.3 lakh shares in Ola Electric during the fiscal year, potentially worth over INR 13 Cr to be vested in the next 4-5 years.

While Calvert and Park joined Ola Electric last year, another key member is Suvonil Chatterjee, who once led design at Flipkart. Now the chief technology and product officer at Ola Electric since 2021, Chatterjee is seen as the second most influential figure in the Ola group.

For instance, he has also played a key role in developing the Ola Krutrim platform and Ola Maps.

Ramkripa Ananthan — many might have spotted her driving an Ola bike onto the stage at Ola Sankalp events. A former Mahindra designer who designed the likes of Mahindra Thar and Mahindra XUV 700 and now Ola bikes, Ananthan is a automobile designer-veteran and fittingly leads the vehicle design team at Ola Electric.

Harish Abichandani, a former CFO at Flipkart’s Ekart division, has emerged as another key executive member at Ola Electric, where he has been leading the finance department since last year. Abichandani has been associated with Ola Electric for the past six years in various capacities. He currently serves as a director for several Ola entities, including Ola Electric Technologies, Ola Financial Services, Ola Electric Charging, Ola Fleet, and Ola Stores.

Unlike most of its peers, Ola Electric has started manufacturing its own cells. It is worth noting that building cells in India is extremely important for the company because, for every INR 100 spent on an electric scooter, over INR 32 goes towards importing cells and other components.

Since March 31, 2024, Ola Cell Technologies has developed the capability to produce 1.4 GWh at the company’s Gigafactory in Krishnanagar, Tamil Nadu, located near the Ola Futurefactory.

However, this is not going to reduce the cell prices for Ola Electric. Instead, the company has planned to heavily invest in cell manufacturing for the next three years in a row to meet the targets per year as promised under the PLI scheme to the Indian government.

While Bhavish Aggarwal has been monitoring and controlling the Ola brands and hence essentially even micromanages the executive decisions across the brands.

Besides Park, sources talk about Vishal Chaturvedi as being another key leader at Ola Cell Technologies.

Chaturvedi is the business head at Ola Cell and Park is the expert in battery manufacturing, and therefore the COO of this subsidiary. Besides the duo, associate director Rajkumar K leads the mechanical cell design team for battery structural parts and packs.

Under CEO Aggarwal, the Ola Electric Technologies features four executives running the show. We have spoken about Ananthan, Chatterjee and Calvert briefly above. But Samraj Jabez Dhinagar, the head of vehicle engineering is another key pillar.

Ananthan, who joined Ola Electric in July 2022, heads the vehicle design unit and the bike concepts unveiled by the company on August 15, 2023 were designed under her purview. A BITS Pilani and IIT Bombay alumni, Ananthan took home INR 1.6 Cr in FY24, while Calvert was paid INR 4.8 Cr in FY24.

Given his sweeping role across verticals, Chatterjee is the highest-paid executive in this division and earned INR 5.3 Cr in FY24.

All of them except Chatterjee have joined in 2022 or after, which does raise some concerns, but their collective depth of experience is a key strength, and there are many questions about Aggarwal’s claims from the past.

The annual production targets for Gigafactory and Futurefactory have also been lowered in the official RHP in comparison to what was initially promoted before the company had to make disclosures. The company had earlier aimed to produce over 1 Mn cars at the Futurefactory, a plan that has now been shelved entirely.

While Giagfactory’s estimated target capacity is now capped at 20 GWh, the 1 Mn production of E4Ws has been fully shelved. The current installed capacity of the Futurefactory stands at 679K, less than 1 Mn, and that’s just for two-wheelers.

Bhavish Aggarwal has always been known to set aggressive targets, but now with Ola Electric required to disclose such targets to the regulatory, the company has had to curb some of that enthusiasm.

There have also been exits in the top management, which is said to be a key factor in Ola Electric rejigging some of its targets. These include Slokarth Das, head of planning and strategy, Saurabh Sarda, head of partnership and corporate affairs, and Shikharr Sood, head of talent acquisition.

Despite having a short term success at the bourses soon after listing, Ola Electric is at a crossroads. And as such, its people will be a key success factor for the company. As a public company, Bhavish Aggarwal will need to let go of some of the aggression that we have witnessed in the past.

After all, there could be deeper ramifications now than just the ire of a few private shareholders.

While its extensive infrastructure, significant investments in technology and R&D, and a moderate valuation successfully attracted a pool of investors, concerns over profitability and basic financial health cannot be ignored.

For instance, the company sold 3.26 Lakh two-wheelers in FY24, it also registered a net loss of INR 1,584 Cr, which effectively means a loss of INR 48,500 on every scooter sold, given that Ola does not yet offer services for EV charging to other OEMs.

Plus, in the first three months of FY24 i.e April-June 2023, EV subsidies were up to INR 40,000 per scooter sold, which was reduced to INR 15,000 from June 2023 onwards. This has been further reduced to INR 10,000, which many expect will cool down the EV market.

One particular calculation by the Morning Context, using the high-low method to calculate the breakeven, shows that Ola Electric may have to sell at least 2.24 Mn per year to turn profitable.

And this by itself could be enough and more pressure for the key leaders at Ola Electric. For the first few years, these leaders have shown that Ola Electric can pull off aggressive growth. Now with the added responsibility of proposed new products — three-wheelers and superbikes — the same team has to show that Ola Electric can grow in a profitable way as well.

[Edited By Nikhil Subramaniam]

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