ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd, the parent company of now multiple Ola-branded businesses, has hired Nuvoco Vistas Corp chief general counsel (GC) Sandeep Chowdhury as its new GC.

Chowhury, who had joined around a month ago, said: “We have around a 10 member team and I need to ramp up the team, given the business and the different things we’ve been planning to do.

“We need to be at least 15 member team in a short time.”

ANI and its legal team operate primarily along the three business lines dubbed mobility (its original cab aggregation / transportation business), financial services and food services.

Ola has previously used a number of Indian and foreign law firms but it might expand its roster.

Chowdhury said: “We are working with a variety of law firms and are also in the process, depending on the matters that we get, of working with new law firms.”

To date, we have reported Ola as having instructed Khaitan & Co and J Sagar Associates (JSA) on its corporate and M&A work.

The ANI in-house legal team had seen some churn in recent months.

Chowdhury follows former Vedanta group GC Nitin Banerjee in the role, who had joined Ola in September 2019 and is in the process of leaving (we have reached out to Banerjee for comment), and Ola head legal / senior director Lopamudra Rao had left in March 2021.

Sanjit Nagarkatti remains vice president legal at Ola Electric Mobility, having joined from Johnson & Johnson in November 2020.