Chief Operating Officer — Electric-Mobility Platform

The mandate

Professional drivers lease electric vehicles from this platform and depend on its charging and maintenance network to earn. Operations, technology and asset teams each address part of the earning-day experience, but no executive owns the complete journey. The Chief Operating Officer will take that accountability.

The remit covers approximately 1,000 employees and material partners across fleet deployment, charging operations, maintenance, control tower, field quality, safety, driver support and partner performance. Vehicle procurement and product engineering have separate leaders; the COO determines whether their outputs are ready for daily use and owns recovery when they are not. The business needs an operator who can be present at a charging queue at dawn and still frame capital choices for the executive committee.

Restoring trust requires more than compensation. Drivers need reliable information about vehicle range, charger status, downtime, deductions and available remedies. The company needs disciplined asset care and economics. A promise that improves earnings by postponing maintenance is unsustainable; a maintenance rule that ignores the driver's lost day is equally incomplete.

Why this seat is open

The recent service event exposed a gap not anticipated in the organisation plan. The CEO had been coordinating the operating functions directly, an arrangement that cannot continue through the next fleet deployment. This urgent, unplanned COO role has been authorised with full line authority. Interim incident governance remains until appointment, and the board expects a careful search despite the six-week target.

What you will own

• Define and operate the end-to-end driver earning day, from vehicle collection and charge planning through trips, maintenance, return and settlement exceptions.
• Establish fleet-availability and charger-reliability measures that reflect usable capacity, not devices or vehicles merely shown as online.
• Redesign field incident command across driver support, maintenance, charging, technology and safety.
• Make downtime compensation transparent, consistently evidenced and fast enough to preserve partner cash flow.
• Build preventive maintenance and parts planning around failure patterns, warranty recovery and minimum disruption to engaged drivers.
• Govern charging and workshop partners through live performance, safety, capacity and remedy obligations.
• Create a field quality system that samples actual driver journeys and verifies closure of recurring faults.
• Develop regional operations leaders with clear authority and successors, reducing dependence on central escalation for ordinary decisions.

The first 12 months

In the first 30 days, reconstruct the recent event from driver report to final settlement, meet affected partners and verify every open corrective action. By day 90, establish a trusted baseline for available vehicles, charger success, lost earning hours and support ageing. Publish interim incident and compensation rules, then agree a six-month reliability plan with technology and asset leaders.

By month six, control-tower monitoring should identify capacity failures before peak demand, maintenance cohorts should be planned by observed degradation and high-volume support issues should have owner-led fixes. Introduce a driver-facing status and remedy view in priority cities. Partner contracts should include evidence rights and consequences for repeated unavailability.

At month twelve, raise productive fleet availability by eight percentage points, achieve 97% successful charging sessions, halve lost earning hours caused by platform-controlled faults and settle 95% of eligible downtime adjustments within three working days. Repeat roadside faults should fall by 40%, and serious safety incidents should meet investigation and learning deadlines without exception.

What the board will measure

• Partner earning-hour availability, including vehicle, charging and support causes.
• Restoration of driver trust through retained engagement, dispute reduction and independently sampled communication clarity.
• Asset reliability and warranty recovery linked to failure cohorts.
• Safe field operations and evidence that incident learning changes work.
• Cost per productive vehicle day rather than isolated departmental savings.
• Strength and judgement of regional operating leaders under pressure.

The person

You have 18–22 years in fleet, electric mobility, automotive service, aviation operations, equipment networks or another uptime-critical field business. You have personally led a serious multi-party service recovery and redesigned the operating system behind it. Experience with independent drivers or owner-operators is strongly preferred.

Your relevant scale includes at least 700 employees and partners and an operating or asset portfolio above ₹2,500 crore. You understand battery and charging operations enough to test evidence while respecting engineering authority. The board will ask how you compensated affected partners, which supplier you held accountable and what leading indicator now prevents recurrence.

This hybrid Bengaluru role requires extensive presence at operating sites and availability during material incidents. It reports to the Group Chief Executive or designated sponsor.

Compensation and terms

The package is ₹3.2–4.6 crore fixed plus performance variable and long-term incentive, weighted to earning-hour availability, trust, safety, cost and leadership. This permanent hybrid appointment is based in Bengaluru with substantial field travel. It reports to the Group Chief Executive or designated executive sponsor. Notice up to six months can be discussed against urgent operating needs.

Confidentiality

The platform, driver groups, asset suppliers and failure details will be shared only after reciprocal fit, conflict checks and a confidentiality undertaking. Scale and circumstances are deliberately blended. Candidates must not seek identification through charging providers, workshops, employees or online partner communities.