Ola Electric appoints N Balachandar as CHRO

Mumbai: Ola Electric has hired N Balachandar as Chief Human Resources Officer. In his new role, Balachandar will accelerate Ola Electric’s journey to become a world-class talent organisation, with a focus on people and culture globally.

Balachandar (or Bala) is a 33-year industry HR veteran, and brings global experience to the company, having worked across India, Europe and Asia with GE Healthcare & GE Capital in several senior HR leadership and M&A roles, with Strides Arcolab, with the Standard Chartered Bank and with Asian Paints early in his career, and most recently as Group Director with the Coffee Day Group.

Commenting on the appointment, Bhavish Aggarwal, Chairman and Group CEO, Ola, said, “As we work on driving growth and building a global EV company, we are ramping up our focus on building a world-class people organisation. Bala’s over three decades of experience across various consumer-facing segments will help us ensure we rapidly scale up the organisation’s structure, capacity, and capability to meet our global growth ambitions”.

Upon joining Ola Electric, N Balachandar, CHRO, said, “I am excited to join Ola’s mission to transition the world to sustainable mobility. Having the best talent from around the world is integral to this mission and I look forward to building a global organisation that will offer a lifetime of opportunities for employees and enable them to make a difference”.

Balachandar’s appointment comes close on the heels of Wayne Burgess who joined Ola Electric recently as Head of Vehicle Design.

Ola is gearing up to launch the first in its range of electric scooters in the coming months. Packed with advanced innovations, the much-anticipated Ola Scooter is a tech-driven electric vehicle with industry leading range and speed. It will offer customers best-in-class performance and experience. The electric two-wheeler will be priced aggressively to make it accessible to all and will help accelerate India’s transition to sustainable, clean and electric mobility.

The Ola Scooter will roll out from the Ola Futurefactory which is being built at record-speed in Tamil Nadu, India. The Ola Futurefactory will be the world’s largest two-wheeler factory when fully operational at 10 million-a-year capacity next year. The factory will start manufacturing the Ola Scooter as soon as its first phase of 2 million annual capacity is ready this summer.