New Delhi/Bengaluru: Embattled entrepreneur Bhavish Aggarwal-owned artificial intelligence venture, Krutrim, is being propped up almost entirely by business routed through venture-capital- and public-investor-backed Ola companies — raising fresh questions among experts over governance and the use of shareholder-backed resources to support a promoter-owned unit.
Krutrim SI Designs Pvt Ltd, which Aggarwal set up through his family office in the summer of 2023, reported revenue from operations of ₹101.7 crore for the year ended March 2025, according to its financials filed with the ministry of corporate affairs. Of this, ₹90.8 crore or 90% of revenue came from two group entities: Ola Electric Mobility and ANI Technologies.
Ola Electric Technologies Pvt Ltd, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Ola Electric Mobility Ltd, accounted for ₹23.87 crore, while Ola Cell Technologies Pvt Ltd, the other subsidiary of the listed company, brought in ₹2.29 crore, according to the review of the financials by Mint. ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd, which runs Ola cabs, accounted for ₹49.05 crore, while its second subsidiary, Ola Financial Services, brought in the remaining ₹15.58 crore.
According to the financials of Krutrim, Ola Electric Mobility, Ola Cell Technologies and ANI Technologies, these related-party transactions were due to Krutrim managing the technology needs of cab services, EV scooters, and lithium-ion cell manufacturing. More details were not immediately available. Krutrim reported revenue for the first time in the year ended March 2025.
A spokesperson for Krutrim said there is no potential conflict of interest in the related-party transactions.
“All related-party transactions are conducted at arm’s length, independently validated, and audited in accordance with transfer pricing norms. As a young business, revenues are currently group-led, with a clear and deliberate focus on expanding the external customer base,” the spokesperson said.
Shared costs, too
Krutrim’s reliance on Ola group companies for business works in other ways, too: sharing employees and infrastructure from Ola Group companies for which the Aggarwal AI venture is paying them back.
Krutrim’s expenses totalled ₹159.39 crore. Of this, ₹65.8 crore is the money reimbursed by Krutrim to Ola Electric Mobility and ANI Technologies. Krutrim spent ₹37.9 crore in salaries to its 485 employees. Additionally, Krutrim also paid ₹6.1 crore to employees of Ola Electric Mobility and ANI Technologies, according to the Krutrim spokesperson.
Krutrim paid ₹16.62 crore to Ola Electric Mobility Inc., US, and ₹2.22 crore to Ola Electric Technologies Pvt Ltd. Ola Electric Mobility Inc., US is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ola Electric Mobility Ltd, as is Ola Electric Technologies, as mentioned earlier. Ola Electric Mobility was additionally reimbursed ₹1.89 crore by Krutrim. Finally, Krutrim paid ₹44.65 crore to ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd in financial year 2025, according to disclosures reviewed by Mint.
Bulk of the cost relates to cloud, rent, and other operating expenses. “Krutrim’s related-party payments represent cost allocations for shared infrastructure and services incurred at the group level, apportioned strictly at cost based on actual usage,” the spokesperson said.
Detailing this, Krutrim said that cross charging is miniscule compared to overall expenses. “In FY25, Krutrim’s total employee benefit expenses stood at ₹238 crore, of which ₹200 crore was capitalized towards R&D, resulting in a net employee cost of ₹37.9 crore. Of this, only ₹6.1 crore represents cross-charged salaries due to the nature of work and dependencies, while the remaining workforce is directly on Krutrim’s payroll,” the spokesperson said.
Krutrim’s structure
Less than five months after OpenAI launched the generative AI tool ChatGPT in November 2022, which eventually upended how businesses across industries operated, Aggarwal set up a company, Krutrim, in April 2023, which, in Sanskrit, means artificial.
Krutrim AI Designs LLP is the holding company, wholly owned by BA Family Office LLP, Aggarwal’s family office.
Krutrim AI Designs owns nearly 90% of Krutrim SI Design, the operating entity. firm Matrix Partners put $50 million into Krutrim SI Design in December 2023, taking a 7% stake, valuing the company at over $1 billion and making it a unicorn.
Krutrim had no business until then.
However, it aspired to build large language models, the foundational technology framework for gen firms like Anthropic and OpenAI and run cloud computing services.
Sometime in the last financial year, Aggarwal, who owns 9% of ANI Technologies and 34.59% of Ola Electric Mobility, outsourced a part of both companies’ technology to Krutrim.
The group intends to complete migration of Ola Electric Group and Ola Consumer Group to Krutrim Cloud in financial year 2026, Krutrim states in last year’s annual report, filed with the ministry of corporate affairs in December last year.
According to an executive directly aware of the matter, the group companies resorted to using Krutrim’s services because they offered a significant cost advantage.
Governance questions
However, governance experts suggest that the company should openly disclose the details of the cost benefits being accrued from using Krutrim’s services.
Such “related party transactions with group firms, where business is going to a personally owned entity of a promoter, is not a good practice, but one which is quite prevalent among Indian promoters,” said Sharmila Gopinath, an independent corporate governance expert. “If the justification is that there is a cost advantage the company is getting, the standards whereby this comparison has been done should be disclosed. There is a need for transparency.”
“If the commercial terms being offered are this attractive which justifies the transactions, the company should not have trouble diversifying its business and getting independent clients,” she added.
Another expert said Krutrim-Ola transactions were avoidable. “Such related party transactions where the business of a listed entity is accruing to an entity which is personally owned by the promoter are a big red flag and these transactions should have been avoided,” said Shriram Subramanian, founder and managing director of proxy advisory firm InGovern Research, adding that the board appears to be acting as a silent observer, approving such transactions.
Common directors, “overboarding”
The composition of Ola’s and Krutrim’s board also drew attention of experts.
Krutrim’s five-member board has no independent members. Besides Aggarwal, Krutrim’s two non-executive and non-independent directors are Krishnamurthy Venugopala Tenneti and Arun Sarin. Two other directors are Navendu Agarwal and Deepak Rastogi. Agarwal is head of business at Krutrim and served as the chief information officer of Ola Electric until March last year. Rastogi took over as the chief financial officer of Ola Electric Mobility on 19 January and, the following day, became a director at Krutrim.
Tenneti and Sarin serve as directors on the board of ANI Technologies and Ola Electric Mobility.
Put simply: three of the five Krutrim board members are also board members of both privately held ANI Technologies and publicly listed Ola Electric Mobility.
“Krutrim is not a subsidiary of any of these companies and instead is a company fully owned by the promoter. It is more transparent for the company to publicly disclose the commercial aspects of the transactions with Krutrim so that it can be independently verified by all shareholders on whether the transaction was beneficial or not,” said Abhishek Banerjee, founder at LotusDew Wealth, an investment advisory firm focusing on corporate governance.
“It is imperative on the board of directors to protect the interests of minority shareholders and keep the management focused. That said, over boarding is a concern in corporate governance. More importantly, these are board of directors of a listed company so their presence in so many boards does raise the question on how judiciously are they able to allocate time,” Banerjee said.
The Krutrim spokesperson said the board positions come with long years of association with Ola.
“The board of directors and their overlapping roles in private and listed companies should be seen in the context of their longstanding association with the Ola group, with some in non-executive positions, predating Ola Electric’s stock market debut,” the spokesperson said.