Cab hailing major Ola has roped in PayU India co-founder Nitin Gupta as CEO of Ola Money, as it looks to build out a financial services business after raising over $1 billion over the last one year.
The company is looking to leverage the high frequency and data of the captive customer base, and could also be eyeing a payment bank license for the business, said two sources familiar with the matter.
Ola Money was launched in November 2015 and allows users to make cashless payments to several other brands besides cab bookings, including Lenskart, BookMyShow, Oyo Rooms, amongst others. The company hired Rushil Goel to head Ola’s payment business in 2015, he quit during the second half of 2016.
Most recently, in October 2017, under the changes in wallet balance limits prescribed under the new RBI guidelines on PPI’s, the permissible balance for wallet users, including Ola Money was reduced from Rs 20,000 to Rs 10,000. In addition to this, the maximum amount that can be reloaded in the wallet cannot exceed Rs.1 lakh in a financial year. Ola did not respond to queries emailed by ET.
“Gupta is possibly the most crucial recruitment that is being made this year,” said an employee, speaking to ET on the condition of anonymity.
Ola is also working on integrating its app with public transportation services. With an aggressive focus on building out a payment business under Gupta, this will help increase the use case of Ola Money across services.
Ola had recently projected that it will become profitable during 2018-19 and report a net operating profit of over Rs 1,170 crore, according to company filing with Ministry of Corporate Affairs. Ola also closed a $1.1 billion round of financing, which has been in the works for a year, led by Chinese internet conglomerate Tencent in October. The round gave Ola a post money valuation of over $4 billion.
Ola’s massive fund-raising is expected to give it firepower to stay ahead of Uber in India, the company will also strongly focus on its electrical vehicles project, according to people familiar with developments in the company.
Gupta’s appointment comes after Shalabh Seth, chief executive of Ola’s cab leasing business, has recently quit and is serving notice.
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