eKart exec Harish Abhichandani replaces Rajiv Bansal as Ola CFO

India’s largest ride hailing company Ola has appointed former eKart executive Harish Abhichandani as its new Chief Financial Officer, filling the position that has remained vacant since February.

Abhichandani replaces Infosys veteran Rajiv Bansal who had joined as the CFO of Ola in October but quit within six months of taking up the position. Pallav Singh, Ola’s head of operations was acting as the interim CFO after Bansal’s departure.

Prior to joining Ola, Abhichandani had served a year and a half stint as the CFO of Flipkart’s logistics unit eKart. He also held a similar position at Tata Teleservices Limited before moving to eKart. An Ola spokesperson confirmed the development, while Abhichandani’s LinkedIn profile reflects the same.

The appointment of Abhichandani comes at a time when Ola is looking to raise funding from new investors such as Tencent and Microsoft, while trying to keep aggressive investors such as Softbank at bay.

During Bansal’s stint at Ola, the company raised $330 million led by Softbank at a valuation of $3.5 billion. Ola had turned down an offer of $1 billion in funding from Softbank last year, fearing the Japanese investor would gain excessive control of the company.

In order to protect the rights of founders - Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, the company even altered its articles of association, stating that Softbank or any of its affiliates would need the consent of the founders and the board in order to purchase shares from other investors in Ola.

Ola continues to fight global rival Uber in a battle that has seen both companies already burn hundreds of millions of dollars on discounting rides and incentivising drivers. Even as its largest investor Softbank is exploring an investment in rival Uber, no condition for a truce between Uber India and Ola has been put forward by the investor.