Google’s Rajan Anandan leaves for Sequoia Capital role
Google India and South East Asia vice president Rajan Anandan is leaving the tech company for a role at Sequoia Capital.
Rajan Anandan quits Google India
Anandan, who is set to leave at the end of this month, has been with Google for over eight years and has been responsible for driving Google’s growth in India, a core market for Google’s ‘next billion users’ mission.
Google has commented on his move, nodding to his influence not only at Google but in building India’s internet and e-commerce ecosystem as a whole.
“We are grateful to Rajan for his huge contribution to Google over the past eight years. His entrepreneurial zeal and leadership has helped grow the overall internet ecosystem in India and Southeast Asia, and we wish him all the best in his new adventures” said Scott Beaumont, president, Google Asia Pacific in a statement.
He will be replaced in the interim by Vikas Agnihotri, who is currently Google India’s country director for sales but the company is looking for a new managing director for India, according to the Economic Times. Google has also confirmed that Stephanie Davis, country director Singapore will take over in the interim for South East Asia (excluding Indonesia); and for Indonesia, it will be Randy Jusuf, managing director, Google Indonesia.
At Sequoia Capital he will be managing director of India and sit alongside six other managing directors in the business. His focus will be a project called Surge, which helps start-ups ‘scale-up’ through mentoring and investment advisory.
According to Sequoia Capital Singapore managing director Shailendra J Singh, Anandan’s experience at scaling major companies will help Indian and South East Asian start-ups.
“As head of Google India and South East Asia, he has played a key role in expanding the internet ecosystem in the region, increasing adoption among consumers and businesses and accelerating innovation while building a multi-billion dollar business that continues to grow very fast. He is also a prolific angel investor who has backed a large number of successful start-ups at the very early stages. Rajan has also led Microsoft and Dell in India, and was earlier a Partner at McKinsey & Co in Chicago,” he said in a Linkedin post.