Swathi Moorthy Moneycontrol News
Rajan Anandan, Vice President Google India and South East Asia, is quitting the company to join Sequoia Capital India as an investor and mentor for startups.
There cannot be a better role for someone who has shown keen interest in nurturing startups. In addition to investing in multiple startups, Anandan was the President of Delhi Chapter of The Indus Entrepreneurs, a non-profit organisation that nurtures entrepreneurship.
If Anandan mentored and encouraged early-stage tech startups as an investor, he has spearheaded several initiatives that boost ecosystem in the country as the vice president. Next Billion Users initiative is one of those.
The initiative is aimed at developing products specifically for emerging markets such as India. Since the launch happened a couple of years back, the tech major has come out with India-only applications such as Neighbourly, a social network platform for the neighbourhood, where you can get your queries answered. First launched in Mumbai, it was expanded to five more cities.
The tech giant launched ‘Solve for India’ initiative to reach out to entrepreneurs in tier II and III towns in 2017. Through this initiative, the entrepreneurs from smaller towns would be able to gain access to direct mentoring and support from Google.
While most of these initiatives were directed globally, Anandan played a significant role in taking it a notch further for which he was awarded the IMPACT person of the year in 2018.
The initiatives include ‘Navlekha’, Google’s platform for Indian users who are not conversant with English, Google ‘Internet Saathi’, an initiative to bring more rural women online, and the Indian Railways high-speed Wi-Fi project, providing free Wi-Fi to consumers at railway stations across the country.
When he addressed entrepreneurs to announce Google’s partnership with 91Springboard last year, his enthusiasm while interacting with entrepreneurs was contagious. He explained how the partnership network could help companies that are suffering from critical issues such as sanitation education and mobility space.
For Anandan, developing the ecosystem was as important as nurturing startups, and he clearly believed that the technology was necessary to solve problems India had been facing.
It was not just about entrepreneurship though. Google Payments was launched last year. YouTube in India grew, and there were significant product developments such as Maps.
When Anandan became the managing director for Google India in 2011, he grew the business steadily. In 2016, Google booked Rs 5,904 crore in revenue, helped along by e-commerce companies and apps spending on acquiring customers, according to a Factordaily report.
The company saw its bottom line increase from Rs 306.6 crore in 2016-17 to Rs 407.2 crore in 2017-18, going by a BusinessWorld report.
If there is one thing that Anandan was not successful in, it would be his role in establishing responsible social media. The tech giant has been accused by MakeMyTrip and BharatMatrimony of manipulating search results (the case with latter is still going on in NCLAT). While the company has continuously declined the allegations, it has not taken any concrete steps to address those either.
With Anandan quitting, his successor has his task cut out. “Google should play a significant role in responsible social media, where none of them has come forward,” Sachin Taparia, CEO - LocalCircles, said.
Twitterati Ashish K Mishra said in a tweet that the successor would have to make sense of payments business, understand Reliance Jio and build more products for Indian users.
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