LinkedIn appoints former Google exec as country head for India

The US-based digital professional networking giant LinkedIn Corporation today announced that it has appointed Ashutosh Gupta as country manager for India. The Microsoft-owned platform said in a statement that Gupta’s appointment will come into effect on September 2, 2019. 

The appointment of Gupta will be the second time in six months that LinkedIn has appointed a country manager for India. Mahesh Narayanan, former MD at Saavn and Google country head for mobile in India, last occupied the position and was appointed in January 2019. 

Gupta joined the company in 2013 to lead LinkedIn’s marketing solutions (LMS) in India where he scaled the enterprise business, a company statement said. In 2016, he moved to Singapore to build LMS’s online sales organisation (OSO) for Asia-Pacific and China. 

Gupta has over two decades of experience in the internet, information technology and software services industries across firms like Google, Cognizant and Infosys.

“India is a strategic market for LinkedIn, and its developing economy and dynamic jobs market is ripe with opportunity for LinkedIn to add value for our members and customers,” Gupta said in the statement. “I also look forward to forging deeper government relationships to inform policy-making with actionable data on jobs and skills, and make LinkedIn an integral part of the national agenda.”

Gupta will report to Olivier Legrand, LinkedIn’s MD for the Asia-Pacific region, and will join the company’s APAC senior management team. Gupta will also continue to lead the LMS’s OSO for APAC and China.