Why Did Rajan Anandan Leave Google? 3 Possible Reasons

Rajan Anandan’s exit from Google has come at a time when he was driving Google India’s aggressive growth and thereby its super profitable India run. His sudden decision to step down has surprised many. For the Sri Lankan Tamil who has worked with Google for over eight years, there were three big factors that shaped his decision to exit Google.

Sources close to the development have revealed that one of the factors was the exit of his previous boss -Karim Temsamani, President of Asia-Pacific for Google, who quit the company in 2018. It is well known that Anandan shared a great professional camaraderie with Temsamani who had moved to Singapore from Australia to head the company’s Asia-Pacific operations in 2013, but quit in 2018.

Beside’s helming Google’s India operations, Anandan has been an active angel investor in over 45 early stage technology companies. This is being cited as the second biggest factor that prompted him to step down and focus on nurturing the early stage start-up ecosystem for which he has been passionate for long. At his next stop Sequoia Capital, Anandan will be managing a bigger investment portfolio.

Some of the start-ups Anandan has invested in include: cybersecurity firm Lucideus, fintech startup Monsoon CreditTech, healthcare startup PregBuddy, education start-up Stoodnt, IoT startup Zenatix, and matchmaking app Inclov. In 2016, he also joined BOV Capital, an early-stage venture capital fund for Sri Lankan startups and also heads the Delhi chapter of non-profit The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), which helps start-ups raise funds and network.

The final factor according to our sources is the recent appointment of Scott Beaumont, who used to head Google’s China and Korean operations, before being appointed as President of Google Asia Pacific just a few weeks back. Sources have revealed that Anandan was also a top contender for the job which finally Beaumont bagged and that led to his decision to step down.

For now, Vikas Agnihotri, Country Director of Sales, has taken over as interim India head and there are reports that Caesar Sengupta who leads Google's project 'Next Billion Users', is likely to succeed Anandan.