NEW DELHI: Google Cloud has elevated Karan Bajwa, who currently leads Google Cloud in India, as the company’s new leader for Asia Pacific. Bajwa will lead all regional revenue and go-to-market operations for Google Cloud, including on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Google Workspace from today. 

He succeeds Rick Harshman who leaves the organisation for a new opportunity. Bajwa is currently based in Gurgaon, India, but will relocate to Singapore in 2021. He will also continue to lead Google Cloud in India until a new senior leader for the business is appointed. He will report to Google Cloud president of sales Rob Enslin.

“Since Karan joined us in March 2020, Google Cloud in India has grown from strength to strength. He’s advanced the digital transformation journeys of many large Indian organisations across industries and successfully expanded our partner community. He brings tremendous management and sales experience with him to this regional role, and we’re thrilled to have him at the helm of our APAC business,” said Enslin. 

“With the disruptions of 2020 behind us, a true test of 2021 will be how companies replatform and build on the cloud not only for resilience but agility and innovation, and I’m excited for the opportunity to lead Google Cloud’s business in APAC to maximise this next phase of growth,” said Bajwa. 

Google Cloud is on a strong growth trajectory within Asia Pacific and counts ANZ Bank, Lendlease, Optus, Sharechat, Tech Mahindra, L&T Finance, Wipro, Samsung Electronics, Foxconn, Kia Motors, Go-JEK, Tokopedia, and XL Axiata as customers to name a few. The company has also invested in technical infrastructure in the region, having launched its GCP regions in Jakarta and Seoul last year, with planned expansion to Delhi and Melbourne in 2021.

Bajwa has nearly 20 years of experience and has worked across multiple technology companies such as IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, and IBM.