Microsoft's Raghuvesh Sarup joins Ola as CMO

At Microsoft, Sarup worked as director, marketing.

Ola, the mobile app for personal transportation, has appointed Raghuvesh Sarup as its chief marketing officer. He will join the company in February and will lead marketing across the brand and P&L (profit and loss) for all categories.

Sarup joins Ola from Microsoft, where he worked as director, marketing, after relocating to India. Prior to that, he had worked at the Nokia headquarters in Finland. He has over 20 years of experience in marketing, sales and brand management across brands such as Microsoft, Nokia, Yum! Brands (Pizza Hut), and Procter&Gamble(P&G).

Sarup also comes with a strong understanding of driving marketing strategy across offline and online media alike.

Bhavish Aggarwal, co-founder and CEO, Ola says, "We welcome Sarup on board and look forward to work with him, to lead marketing and categories at Ola. He has worked with globally respected businesses and brings valuable experience that will help Ola resonate as the choice of mobility for a billion people."

Speaking about his new role, Sarup says, "Ola is already a household name in India, serving the mobility needs of millions. I am excited to be part of this amazing journey and consider it a privilege to be building this brand and its core categories further in the future."

Sarup started his career with P&G in brand management for brands like Camay and Vicks. He went on to head marketing for Pizza Hut (formerly PepsiCo restaurants), when the brand entered India in 1997, taking Pizza Hut from two stores to over 150 by 2004.

The same year, Sarup joined Nokia India as one of the first few employees and led the de-centralising and scaling up of its distribution in the country. During his 12-year tenure at Nokia-Microsoft, he led the mobile phones category and go-to-market in India and launched several devices. He worked in Finland as the global director of the N-Series category, and then as head of Lumia to launch the brand in over 60 countries. He returned to India in 2013 as director of sales and marketing, Microsoft Mobile Devices (MMDS).

Founded in January 2011 by IIT Bombay alumni Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, Ola (formerly Olacabs), integrates city transportation for customers and driver partners onto a mobile technology platform. The company claims that users across 102 cities can book from over 3,50,000 vehicles across cabs, auto-rickshaws and taxis using the Ola mobile app.