Speed bump: Uber rival Ola’s star hire quits

Former Lazada MD and Ola VP Sundeep Sahni. Photo credit: 10,000 Startups.

2016 hasn’t been kind to Ola, Uber’s rival in India. The latest speed bump is the exit of its star VP, Sundeep Sahni, former MD and co-founder of Lazada, Southeast Asia’s leading ecommerce site.

Sundeep sent an internal email to colleagues announcing his decision to move on, according to Techcircle. This comes barely a year and a half since his much-touted arrival at Ola, where he took charge of new initiatives.

Both Ola and India’s other top unicorn, Flipkart, have had little luck with their foreign hires. Former Google VP Punit Soni was among several high-level exits from the Indian ecommerce site this year. He lasted a little over a year as Flipkart’s chief product officer.

After quitting, Punit openly criticized the lack of empowerment of top professionals in Indian companies. “The Indian ecosystem’s ability to absorb talent from other places might be lower than it is believed to be. I can see other people also exiting around me,” he said in an interview with The Hindu.

See: The world’s best firms have Indian CEOs – but why not in Asia?

Sharad Sharma, an angel investor and co-founder of think tank iSPIRT, earlier told Tech in Asia that the foreign hires were a desperate and futile move by Flipkart and Ola in kneejerk reaction to the heat from their global rivals Amazon and Uber.

See: Why Flipkart, Snapdeal, and Ola are hiring ‘Kenyans’ to run their race

Both Flipkart and Ola have seen their valuations slashed by investors this year. Japanese giant SoftBank wrote down US$550 million from its biggest investments in India, Snapdeal and Ola.

Ola is yet to respond to an email from Tech in Asia on the reasons behind the exit of Sundeep Sahni. We will update this report when it does respond.