Ola Electric Mobility Private Limited has appointed Arun Sarin, Former CEO of Vodafone Group Plc as an independent director on its board. 

Sarin’s role would be of a mentor and advisor to OLA Electric. It is also to be noted that Sarin had earlier invested in OLA in 2015 and in Ola Electric in its series-A funding earlier this year in 2019.

Besides, OLA Electric, Sarin also serves on the boards of Cisco Systems, Accenture, Charles Schwab and Ola’s parent company, ANI Technologies.

On his appointment, he shared in media “Electric Mobility at scale is the need of the hour and can help us solve some of the world’s most complex problems like climate change, pollution, over-dependence on non-renewables amongst others.”

The idea of OLA Electric was incepted with an aim to bring one million electric vehicles on Indian roads by 2022 along with setting up an ecosystem for EV charging (via battery swapping stations). As part of that, Ola Electric’s initial focus will be on electric two- and three-wheelers.

Bhavish Aggarwal, Co-Founder and Chief Executive, Ola said, “I am very excited to welcome Arun on the board of Ola Electric. Over the years, his guidance and support have helped Ola grow as an organization with a global perspective. We aim to build an ecosystem that can accelerate the adoption of electric mobility in India and across the world.”

Arun is sn IIT- Kharagpur graduate and has an MS in engineering and an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley. He had initially worked with Pacific Telesis Group and had held a series of senior management positions. He was later appointed President of AirTouch Communications, following the company’s demerger from the group.

ImageCredits: Accenture