TaxiForSure CEO Arvind Singhal steps down 4 months after acquisition by Ola

Cab-hailing application TaxiForSure’s CEO Arvind Singhal has quit the company just four months after he took up the post, citing personal reasons.

TaxiForSure was acquired by rival Ola in March 2015 for $200 million. Speculation is rife that Ola may  close TaxiForSure as an independent business over the next year. The company, according to a report in Mint, is already restructuring its operations by moving  its engineering and product employees to its owner Ola.

However, Ola continues to maintain that TaxiForSure would operate independently.

“TaxiForSure continues to operate as an independent brand with a focus on the economy cab segment. We have found significant benefit in integrating some core teams such as Product and Engineering across both brands in the recent past,” Ola said in a statement.

In June, Ola allowed users to book TaxiForSure cabs on its mobile app. TaxiForSure has a fleet of 24,000 vehicles in the country, of which about 50 percent are hatchbacks.

Ola Cabs has appointed Pallav Singh as the chief executive of TaxiForSure to consolidate and improve its efficiency as global rival Uber expands its business in India.

A report in NextBigWhat says Singhal’s departure comes at a time when other senior executives too have left the company.

Amol Patil, who headed engineering quit in May this year, Amitava Ghosh who was the chief technology officer and Hari T.N who was the chief people officer left in March. Singhal was made the CEO of TaxiForSure after its  founders Aprameya Radhakrishna and G Raghunandan, quit in April, a month after selling the company to Ola.

Ola, which dominates the app-based taxi aggregator space, has got personal investments from two Indian corporate honchos — Tata Sons chairman emeritus  Ratan Tata and former Vodafone Global CEO Arun Sarin. However the sudden exit of senior executives  as well as the shift of its key technology team to Ola raise questions about the future of  TaxiForSure as an independent business. Consolidation, it appears, is very much on the cards.