Ola Electric—Ola Electric's payments to CEO Bhavish Aggarwal's Krutrim AI nearly quadrupled to Rs 100 crore even as overall costs were cut in half
Ola Electric's payments to Krutrim AI, a separate company owned by its own founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal, rose roughly fourfold to about Rs 100 crore in FY26 even as the company's overall expenses fell by nearly half, including about Rs 46 crore in advance payments for services not yet invoiced. Corporate governance experts flagged the transaction for scrutiny given board overlap between the two entities and questioned whether the arrangement met the arm's-length and independent-approval requirements of SEBI's related-party transaction rules. Ola Electric said the payments reflected a full migration of its cloud and AI infrastructure to Krutrim and that the transactions were arm's-length and fully compliant.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corporate Governance | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.662 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (medium ×1) × confidence (0.66)
Evidence (2 signals)
Cartoq: Ola Electric cut costs nearly in half, but its Krutrim bill jumped 4x to Rs 100 crore
Cartoq corroborated that Ola Electric's payments to Krutrim rose roughly fourfold to Rs 100 crore even as the company's overall cost base fell sharply.
LiveMint: Ola Electric payments to Bhavish Aggarwal's Krutrim nearly quadruple in one year
LiveMint reported Ola Electric's payments to Krutrim AI, owned by CEO Bhavish Aggarwal, jumped roughly fourfold to about Rs 100 crore even as the company's overall expenses were cut nearly in half, including Rs 46 crore in advances for uninvoiced services, with governance experts questioning board independence in approving the related-party transaction.