Google to appoint Sreenivasa Reddy as new India policy head

Google is set to appoint Sreenivasa Reddy as the new India policy head. A senior engineering executive at Microsoft, Reddy will be taking care of the big tech’s legal challenges in the country and expanding hardware assembly, a Bloomberg report stated. Reddy would be replacing Archana Gulati who exited Google in September 2022 after serving a tenure of five months. 

This would not be Reddy’s first time in a policy and regulatory role. Between 2018 and 2021, he was Apple’s head of regulatory affairs in India; before that he served five years at Ericsson as the vice president and head of government and industry relations. He helped drive domestic manufacturing at both companies. He has also worked with Aircel, Marconi, and Blue Star.

Reddy will help Google wade through several policy and regulatory challenges in the country. Last year in October, India’s antitrust body fined Google $275 million in two cases for abusing its dominant position in the Android market and forcing developers to use in-app payment systems. In May, IT minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar told Reuters that the government will take action against the company for indulging in anti-competitive practices.

Reddy will also play a prominent role as Google seeks to diversify beyond China and is looking for Indian partners to assemble its Pixel smartphones. Further, the company is expanding its position in the Indian market. Last month, Google held its I/O Connect event in Bengaluru, where it announced a new accelerator program and grant for easy onboarding of companies on the government-backed open network for digital commerce (ONDC). It also open-sourced the first set of speech data under Project Vaani, comprising over 4,000 hours in 38 Indic languages.