Ola appoints ex-Goldman Sachs exec as VP Engg

Cab aggregator Ola has appointed Sunil Shirguppi, former vice president at Goldman Sachs, as vice president – engineering.

Shirguppi will be working towards enhancing capabilities in data science, machine learning, and consumer and behavioural analytics at the company, a statement from Ola said.

"As an organisation, we churn tons of valuable data every single day and this can be continuously used to build a superior experience for both drivers and consumers. Sunil's experience and expertise will help us scale engineering capabilities at Ola to enable mobility for a billion Indians," said CTO and co-founder Ankit Bhati, on the appointment.

Besides Goldman Sachs, Shriguppi has worked with global majors such as LinkedIn and Electronic Arts.

He holds an MBA degree from San Jose State University, California.

Ola has been strengthening its upper deck for the past few months. In January, it named former Microsoft India executive Raghuvesh Sarup as its first chief marketing officer. In December 2015, it brought in Joy Bandekar from e-commerce firm Flipkart as its corporate president to lead new initiatives. In November, it appointed Infosys Ltd's former finance head Rajiv Bansal as its chief financial officer.

In July, the company brought in former Lazada Indonesia managing director Sundeep Sahni as its vice president of new initiatives. Sahni is also part of Ola's core leadership team.

In the same month, it roped in former Vodafone Group CEO Arun Sarin as independent director.

Mumbai-based Ola, run by ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd., was founded in January 2011 by IIT Bombay alumni Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati. It competes with San Francisco-based Uber for India's burgeoning ride aggregation space. Ola has a network of about 3,50,000 vehicles on its platform and operates in 102 cities.

Recently, Ola completed its Series F funding round by raising $500 million from Scottish investment firm Baillie Gifford and China's Didi Kuaidi, besides some existing investors.