In an effort to catch up with Amazon and Microsoft’s cloud computing business, Google has appointed Karan Bajwa as Managing Director of Google Cloud in India.

Bajwa, with three decades of leadership experience, joins Google’s Cloud business from IBM where he was Managing Director for India and South Asia. Prior to IBM, he worked with Microsoft for nine years, his last role being the Managing Director for the company’s operations in India. He has also worked with Cisco Systems in India, Singapore and will be responsible for driving all revenues and go-to-market operations for Google Cloud’s solution portfolio that includes Google Cloud Platform and G Suite.

Google Cloud’s field sales, partner and customer engineering organisations in India will also report to him, and he will advise Google Cloud’s continued work with the local developer ecosystem and India-based Global System Integrators (GSIs). Bajwa replaces Nitin Bawankule, who left last year to join Star TV Network as President Ad Sales.

Making the announcement, Rick Harshman, Managing Director of Google Cloud in Asia Pacific, said: “Karan Bajwa is a veteran in the industry with a proven track record of building and growing successful enterprise businesses. His experience will be a tremendous asset to Google Cloud’s business, our partners and our customers as we embark on this next phase of growth.”

Bajwa said, “Leveraging cloud computing technology to modernise and scale for growth is on the agenda of almost every enterprise CEO and CIO and Google Cloud is committed to help every organisation accelerate their digital transformation.”

The development comes in the backdrop of Google’s aggressive approach to grow its cloud business that lags behind Amazon and Microsoft. According to industry sources, Google restructured its cloud computing unit in the second week of February this year to improve revenues. The division generated $8.92 billion in revenue in fiscal 2019, compared with $5.84 billion in 2018, and Google claims it's on a $10-billion annual run rate.

In comparison, Amazon Web Services booked more than $35 billion in revenue last year, while Microsoft is the clear No. 2 in the industry. “It would be interesting to see Google’s pricing strategy in this highly cost competitive market, something which others have cracked through bundled offerings,” said an analyst.

Google’s push to get companies in India to sign on to its platform can be gauged from the fact that recently it announced plans to open its second cloud region in India.

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