OLX and Mettl elevate top executives to strengthen leadership

Online classifieds company OLX has elevated its chief revenue and strategy officer Sushil Kumar to the post of general manager for India, a company statement said.

The IIT Guwahati and UPC Barcelona alumnus helped set up key business functions in the company such as product, technology, marketing and sales since he joined as a data scientist in 2014, the statement added.

“In the coming two years, we plan to invest in leveraging emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning to enable a more seamless experience to our customers which is going to be significantly important in the success of our business,” Kumar said in the statement.

In January this year, OLX had acquired online recruitment platform Aasaanjobs. The company also claims to command 77% of the pre-owned cars market share in India through OLX Auto and OLX CashMyCar.

“Our growing focus on India as a strategic growth market has brought some very exciting changes at OLX. The knowledge, experience and passion that Sushil brings to the company further strengthens our vision to deliver differentiated value to our customers,” said Tim Hilpert, chief executive of OLX Markets, one of the four global divisions of OLX Group, in the statement.

The company is present across five continents.

OLX India reported a 93% jump in operating revenue and a doubling of its total expenses for the financial year 2017-18. The Indian arm of the Netherlands-headquartered company saw its profits rise to Rs 15.59 crore in 2017-18 from Rs 8 crore the previous year. The growth came from the listing of pre-owned cars on the portal after it re-entered the used cars business in 2016.

In January 2018, OLX appointed Momtaz Moussa as its India general manager.

In a separate appointment, Mercer-owned Mettl, an online skill assessment platform, elevated its chief revenue officer Siddhartha Gupta as the new CEO.

Kalaari Capital and Blume Ventures-backed Mettl was acquired in 2018 by Mercer, a global human resources consulting company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of NYSE-listed Marsh & McLennan Companies.

“I am excited to have been offered the opportunity to lead Mercer | Mettl at such an important time in its development. Mercer | Mettl has a great culture, amazing market capability and a strategy that has seen us grow solidly in recent years. I am looking forward to building on this success whilst simultaneously ensuring we remain focused on delivering the very best quality products and service to our customers,” said Gupta in the statement.

Mettl was founded in 2010 by Ketan Kapoor and Tonmoy Singhal. It offered a software-as-a-service platform to help companies screen pre-hires for both entry level and experienced profiles.