Read- k oblivious algebraic branching programs are a natural generalization of the well-studied model of read-once oblivious algebraic branching program (ROABPs). In this work, we give an exponential lower bound of exp ( n k O ( k ) ) on the width of any read- k oblivious ABP computing some explicit multilinear polynomial f that is computed by a polynomial size depth- 3 circuit. We also study the polynomial identity testing (PIT) problem for this model and obtain a white-box subexponential-time PIT algorithm. The algorithm runs in time 2 O ( n 1 − 1 2 k − 1 ) and needs white box access only to know the order in which the variables appear in the ABP.