Driving transport

Ola has appointed Raghuvesh Sarup as chief marketing officer. He will join the company in February and will lead marketing across the brand and P&L (profit and loss) for all categories. Sarup joins Ola from Microsoft, where he worked as director, marketing, after relocating to India. Prior to that, he had worked at the Nokia headquarters in Finland. He has over 20 years of experience in marketing, sales and brand management across brands such as Microsoft, Nokia, Yum! Brands (Pizza Hut), and Procter&Gamble. Sarup also comes with a strong understanding of driving marketing strategy across offline and online media alike.

Telecom transfer
Micromax Informatics has appointed Vikas Thapar as new senior vice-president, finance. Thapar will be responsible to build the company's asset and revenue base while leading the external relationship developments with all key stakeholders. With a career spanning over 25 years, Thapar has worked in telecom, IT and infrastructure domains. Prior to joining Micromax, he was the executive director at Avocado Management Services.

Mobile move

India's largest mobile payments and commerce platform Paytm has hired former ITC executive Varun Khullar for its payments bank business. Khullar will lead the partnerships division and will be responsible for building relationships with potential partners such as insurance companies, banks and non-banking financial institutions. Prior to joining Paytm, Khullar, an alumnus of IIT Madras and Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, worked with medical devices firm Boston Scientific Corporation. He has also worked
with McKinsey & Co and ITC.

Overstock overseer

Overstock and ecommerce platform Surpluss.in has appointed Saurabh Rai as chief executive officer. Rai, who was leading sales for Accenture Digital's Analytics Applications Platform for Resources in Asia Pacific and Europe, has extensive experience in setting up resources and consulting practice and leading charge in sales, mergers and acquisitions, competency development, business process management and implementing business strategies for large-scale expansion. An innovative thinker, he also has US patents to his credit.