Caesar Sengupta, Vice President, Product Management from Google joined us to discuss the “Next Billion” initiative for Google, based on present and new ideas to allow the company engage with the next billion users in a mobile first world of Asia Pacific. We start from Caesar’s early work with Chrome browser and OS in the US and what it is like to work with Sundar Pichai, the current CEO of Google. Then we dived deep in the Next Billion initiative, to understand Google’s thinking and current technologies such as Project Loon, Android and Youtube and how they can be extended to the emerging markets. Last but not least, Caesar shared his observations and perspectives about Asia Pacific, how mobile is changing the landscape and where the next interesting technologies might lie for its future.
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Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong is a weekly podcast dedicated to the pulse of technology, business & media in Asia. They interview thought leaders and leading industry players and gain their insights to how we perceive and understand the market. Analyse Asia is a content partner of TechNode.
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Notes:
- Caesar Sengupta VP, Product Management, Google (@caesars, LinkedIn)
- How did you get started in technology? [0:45]
- In the course of your career, what are the interesting lessons you have learned so far? [1:43]
- Google’s Next Billion Project [4:00]
- Introduction to Google: Can you briefly talk about Google’s vision and mission? [4:21]
- What is it like working with Sundar Pichai, the current CEO of Google? [4:59]
- What is the footprint of Google in Asia Pacific? Is it specifically mobile first? [5:38]
- You have been with Google more than 9 years, what are the interesting projects you have worked on? Has any of the projects actually interweaved with Asian countries? (For example, Google Chrome books in Malaysia) [6:40]
- From Google’s current innovations, what are the various initiatives that are focused on the Next Billion (Android One, Project Loon, or other projects) or improvements made in existing initiatives such as Maps and GMail? [8:54]
- Android One and its impact to emerging markets [10:17]
- GMail, Maps & Youtube offline for the next billion users [12:30]
- Given three out of five BRIIC (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China) nations are in Asia with at least 2.5-2.7B population, how does Google segment the emerging and frontier markets for the next billion? [13:53]
- Recently, you have announced the Next Billion initiative from Google Asia Pacific, how did this idea come about or is it an cumulation of initiatives arise from various earlier initiatives? [15:14]
- Together with the government of Singapore, Google APAC (headquartered in Singapore) is now starting to build an engineering team here and acquire a team from Pie.co in Singapore, can you talk about the thinking behind these new initiatives? [16:35]
- Thought leadership and ecosystems across Asia Pacific
- Asia is a mobile first world – what are the interesting trends you have observed in the last one-two years? [18:09]
- When you look from the emerging or frontier markets in Asia to developed cities, how do you see mobile usage change across the segment (a city in Singapore vs a city in Myanmar vs a city in Indonesia? [20:10]
- Asia is poised to grow in the next decade, which areas of upcoming technologies that will have a high impact? (Self Driving cars, 3D printing, Artificial Intelligence – Google Now and Google Translate) [21:49]