Ola hires Pranav Tiwari, Sanjay Kharb to strengthen core technology leadership

BENGALURU: Taxi aggregator with a popular mobile app for transportation, Ola has made two significant appointments, strengthening its core technology leadership. Pranav Tiwari, former CTO of Cellworks as well as an ex-Googler has joined as the Vice President of Engineering and will be working towards optimizing growth and profitability by bringing in necessary efficiencies in the supply chain function.

Sanjay Kharb who was earlier VP - Production Engineering at InMobi has joined as Vice President of Engineering Infrastructure and will strengthen efficiencies in Ola’s technology infrastructure including site operability, compliance and data systems.

Ankit Bhati, CTO and Co-founder at Ola, said, “Ola has consistently invested in technology, consolidating supply chain and building a robust technological backbone, by bringing onboard, world class talent. Both Pranav’s and Sanjay’s roles are critical and essential to steer Ola to its next phase of growth. They bring in relevant and significant experience with large technology businesses and they have an integral role to play in Ola’s aspirations to create innovative solutions that will efficiently solve for the diverse mobility needs of the country. I am excited to welcome them in joining our mission of building mobility for a billion Indians.”

Pranav Tiwari will be leading Ola’s team of engineers to enhance and develop Ola’s fulfillment stack and allotment platform. The team will work closely with the supply chain team to help create a better experience for customers and driver partners alike, by building solutions that will effectively optimize use of vehicles on the platform, reduce deviations in routes, and improve matching of customer with drivers, among others. Local nuances such as one-ways, short-cuts and unmapped terrains along with diversity in culture, languages and demographics make for a challenging ground reality in India. Therefore, innovations around mapping and geo-locations are extremely critical to offer a seamless experience. Pranav’s experience with Google in maps and data mining will aid Ola in driving localized solutions to combat issues that customers and drivers face on road today, says the press release.

“Ola has redefined the way India travels. Ola is driven by the vision of building sustainable mobility solutions for a billion Indians and I am extremely excited to join this mission. I am looking forward to building innovative solutions alongside the brilliant team at Ola, solving for India’s unique commuting needs.” said Pranav Tiwari on his appointment as Vice President - Engineering, Ola.

Prior to joining Ola, Pranav was the CTO of Cellworks, where he led the building of computational platforms that could predict outcomes of therapy using simulation. He has also worked at Google India for over 12 years leading the engineering site at Bangalore, which is one of the 3 largest Google engineering offices outside US. Pranav has over 35 patents in his name, as a result of the path breaking work he has led in the field of web data mining and data scalability.