Head of Google’s Next Billion Users Caesar Sengupta to move on

Caesar Sengupta, vice president and general manager of payments and Next Billion Users initiative at Google, is leaving the company after almost 15 years of service. 

Sengupta led the Mountain View, California company’s Next billion Users initiative since 2015, and was tasked with the additional responsibility of payments in 2018.  

The Next Billion Users is an initiative undertaken by Google to create products or services aimed specifically at emerging markets. The company emphasised on user research in these countries as the needs and case studies were considerably different as compared to the developed nations.  

Under Sengupta’s leadership, in 2015, Google brought internet connectivity to hundreds of railway stations across India. However, Google shut the free wi-fi initiative in early 2020, citing reduction in mobile data costs along with difficulty in sustainable scalability.  

Other launches under the Next Billion Users are Google Pay in India, low data usage applications like YouTube Go, Google Go, offline applications such as Maps offline and even platforms like Android Go.  

Read: Google slashes Play Store developer commission in half 

“I haven’t decided what I will start next. I am going to take some time to chill, talk to interesting people, reconnect with the external world and ride my bike,” Caesar wrote in a farewell letter to his employees, which he has also shared publicly on LinkedIn.   

Sengupta began his career in Google as a product manager in 2006, after which he was promoted to the position of vice president and product lead of the Chrome Operating System in 2009 (the OS that was used in Chromebooks), a post he served for six years before being given the responsibility of the Next Billion Users initiative in 2015. 

An alumnus of Stanford University and University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Sengupta also played a role in Google’s investment in companies in India such as news application Dailyhunt, delivery startup Dunzo, and android lockscreen developer Glance.  

Globally, he played roles in Google’s investments in Indonesia, coding programs for developers in Singapore, and building teams in the APAC region.  

Caesar will officially stay on with Google until April 30.