Meet the man who would work on Ola’s artificial intelligence

Ola has announced the appointment of Badri Raghavan, a seasoned data scientist with over 20 years of extensive domain experience, as its Chief Data Scientist. As a company that holds vast database of drivers, customers, and every single trip that takes place on its platform, Ola’s business is deeply rooted in data science and in drawing valuable insights to build innovative solutions, that resonate with the needs of Indian consumers and driver partners alike.

What will he be doing?
Badri’s key responsibilities will include leading a world class Data Science team with cutting edge training in Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Decision Analysis, Pattern Recognition and related areas. This team will work across various business units and departments, to gain operational and business efficiencies, ranging from demand and supply prediction, driver behavior and performance management, location Intelligence, to name a few.

With operations across 100+ cities and more than 5 lakh driver partners on board, Ola has established a strong foundation of data and analytics. Building innovation based on the insights gathered from Ola’s large scale of operations will therefore continue to prove critical to the company’s growth in the near future.

Badri’s experience in the field of Data Science across multiple domains will play a key role in driving Ola’s next phase of innovation based on richer and deeper understanding of Indian consumer behaviour and serve their mobility needs.

What was he doing?
Prior to Ola, Badri was the Chief Data Scientist and Founding CTO of FirstFuel Software, a leading energy and utilities analytics firm based out of Boston. Not only did Badri steer the development of the breakthrough energy analytics applications at FirstFuel, but he was also instrumental in establishing the overall technology vision and driving the firm’s growth in significant ways across three rounds of venture funding from leading VCs. Badri was also working with IBM Research in New York as the Associate Director, Energy and Utility Analytics, where he helped set a framework for IBM’s analytics driven Smart Grid applications. Badri has worked in FICO for nearly a decade in leadership roles in analytics, product and operations. He was part of the founding team at FICO Bangalore, where he conceptualized, built and executed the strategy to develop Centre for Decision Analytics.