Archana Gulati head of policy at Google India resigns and declines to report a comment

Archana Gulati, head of policy at Google India, resigns and declines to report a comment

Several areas of Google’s business practices are being investigated, according to Archana Gulati, who previously worked for the Competition Commission of India.

Archana Gulati, the head of government affairs and public policy at Google India, has left her position, according to reports. Gulati joined the internet giant barely five months ago after leaving the government.

Before joining Google India, Gulati, an economist with a PhD from IIT-Delhi, worked at NITI Aayog as Joint Secretary (Digital Communications). NITI Aayog is a government think tank that provides policy advice.

According to sources with knowledge of the situation, Ms Gulati has left Google India. Both Ms Gulati and Google declined to respond to requests for comment.

She left Google, although the reason why is unknown.

The resignation occurs as Google deals with several antitrust litigations in India and more stringent restrictions for the digital industry.

Ms Gulati’s former employer, the Competition Commission of India (CCI), is investigating Google’s business practices in the market for smart TVs, its Android operating system, and its in-app payment mechanism.

Before voluntarily leaving, Ms Gulati headed the NITI Aayog’s digital communications policy from August 2019 to March 2021. She worked as a freelancer for a year before joining Google this May.

According to her LinkedIn page, she served as an officer on special duty in the telecom secretary’s office from May 2017 to August 2019.

In addition, Ms Gulati served as the head of the division of the Competition Commission of India which handled mergers and acquisition-related competition issues.

Between May 2007 and February 2012, Ms Gulati worked as a joint administrator at the telecom ministry’s Universal Services Obligation Fund of India, where she was responsible for the financial aspects of the creation and implementation of USOF schemes as well as the distribution of subsidy funds.

Google’s current state in India

In light of budget restrictions, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said: “You don’t need money to have pleasure.” Staff employees questioned Google CEO Sundar Pichai about cost-cutting during an all-hands meeting last week.

After posting weaker-than-expected profitability for the second consecutive quarter, Google substantially decreased the money designated for staff travel and leisure. Employees recently asked CEO Sundar Pichai for details on managing productivity, the company’s austerity measures surrounding the leisure budget, as well as layoffs, as a way of expressing their displeasure with the move.

Employees are said to have heard Pichai’s message that enjoyment at work comes before money and benefits and that they should not worry about having to make budget cuts due to the recession or employee benefits.

During an all-hands meeting last week, Pichai was questioned about cost-cutting by employees, according to a CNBC story. In response to the Covid epidemic, Google employees posed Pichai a highly-rated inquiry asking why the firm was “nickel-and-diming” workers by reducing travel and other expenses while it “had record profits and massive financial reserves.” In these meetings, questions are put forth and then rated by other guests.

Pichai advised the employees to remain together in the face of such macroeconomic difficulties in answer to the question. “What ought I to say? I hope everyone is following the international news, look.

We are acting a little bit more responsibly since the macroeconomic situation we are in right now is among the most difficult in the last ten years. I think it’s critical that as a business, we cooperate to get through situations like this “In an audio clip that CNBC has access to, Pichai says.

“I can still picture Google as a young, nimble company. We shouldn’t necessarily associate enjoyment with cash. It shouldn’t always be about making money, in my opinion, because you can walk into a startup where people are working hard and yet be having fun “Added he.

Sundar Pichai occasionally showed signs of annoyance at the contentious all-hands meeting. We don’t always get to choose the macroeconomic circumstances, he even said.

Pichai also said that Google is having trouble filling roles. He repeated that Google has an excessive number of employees and that productivity doesn’t match these numbers. “I believe you might be a team of 20 or a squad of 100.

On a looking-ahead basis, our ability to grow will be limited. Perhaps you had planned to hire six more workers, but now you might only need to manage four. How will you manage that? For other teams, the solutions would differ, insisted Pichai.

Due to the unfavourable macroeconomic situation, businesses lately have been slashing costs, especially those in the technology sector. The easy money that has fuelled startup culture is no longer as easily available as it once was due to gradually rising interest rates throughout the world. Many tech companies, including Google and Facebook, have lowered some benefits and slowed hiring as a result, among others.

edited and proofread by nikita sharma