The Internet Evangelist

Rajan Anandan, VP, South East Asia & India, Google is IMPACT Person of the Year 2018 for being a dynamic leader in India’s digital ecosystem, accelerating innovation, growing Internet adoption, enabling vernacular language access of the Internet and making ‘Internet for every Indian’ his mission

- Srabana Lahiri

At Google’s headquarters in Gurgaon, Rajan Anandan, the company’s leader in India and South-east Asia, is affable and charming in the course of this hour-long conversation. Google India is profitable, its many initiatives to help people use the Internet to better their lives are taking off and Anandan’s mission – to get every Indian on the Internet – has begun in right earnest. Therefore, it is a happy Anandan who talks to us, quick to slip from poking fun at himself to seriously dwelling on life, leadership and lessons learnt…

The first time I used the Internet, I actually didn’t know it…

Working on programming at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Athena labs in Cambridge in the early 1990s, the first time I used the Internet, I actually didn’t know I was on the Internet! It was before the launch of the commercial Internet as we know it, and it wasn’t called ‘the Internet’ at the time… that’s my earliest recollection. And then when the commercial Internet arrived, Netscape, Yahoo Mail… I remember buying some books in 199798 after Amazon had launched and having them delivered… it was a magical experience… how you could order something and get it delivered at your doorstep. It’s incredible to see how the Internet has evolved.

As a child, I actually wanted to be a pilot…

When I was a child, I wanted to be a pilot, and fly planes. In fact, when I was 16, I actually took all the pilot training classes, but I was told afterwards that I was too young to take the test for a pilot’s licence. So, I lost interest in it and moved on to other things, otherwise I would probably have been flying Jet Airways or something!

There is no one model of great leadership…