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Ola ropes in former SABMiller exec as CEO of leasing arm

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Cab-hailing service Ola has appointed Shalabh Seth as chief executive of Ola Fleet Technologies, a wholly owned leasing subsidiary, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

Prior to joining Ola Fleet, Seth was serving as managing director at SABMiller India, where he was responsible for business expansion and growth in the country.

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Seth will be responsible for driving supply growth through leasing and other driver-focussed initiatives at Ola Fleet, the company said.

"Shalabh brings in valuable experience in managing a large and complex business and we believe he is rightly equipped to take Ola's leasing business to the next level," said Bhavish Aggarwal, chief executive and co-founder, Ola.

Ola's cab-aggregation service is present in 102 cities and users can book from over 500,000 vehicles across cabs, auto-rickshaws and taxis. The company has introduced a range of shared mobility services on its platform such as Ola Shuttle and Ola Share.

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Ola has raised around $1.3 billion in external funding so far. It was valued around $5 billion when it last raised funds in November 2015. It's been over a year since the last round and the company needs to pump in more capital to take on arch-rival Uber.

The company shut its TaxiforSure business division in 2016 and retrenched around 1,000 employees. It recently suffered a valuation markdown by its lead investor SoftBank.

Ola was in the news for more wrong reasons than right last year, from drying coffers and falling valuations to rumours of a down round and a nasty war of words with arch-rival Uber Technologies Inc.

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The company also got a lot of flak for trading silly 'nationalist' barbs with Uber, demanding government intervention against predatory pricing and seeking protection from mighty global rivals.


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