Google’s APAC Web3 Team Gets Indian-Origin Rishi Ramchandani as Lead: Details

Google is focussing on finetuning its global Web3 teams despite the ongoing crypto slump.

Written by Radhika Parashar, Edited by Richa Sharma | Updated: 22 December 2022 18:47 IST

Google’s APAC Web3 Team Gets Indian-Origin Rishi Ramchandani as Lead: Details

Photo Credit: Google

Ramchandani was formerly working in the now bankrupt BlockFi crypto lending firm

Highlights

Google’s Cloud division is trying to bring about integrations with Web3
Google and Coinbase are working on crypto solutions
Google aims to make building in Web3 faster and more efficient

Google is adding new members to its Web3 team, deployed in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. In the latest appointment, the tech major has roped-in Rishi Ramchandani to lead its Web3 APAC team. The Indian origin techie was previously working at BlockFi, the digital asset lender that filed for bankruptcy in November this year. Ramchandani's appointment was officially announced on Thursday, December 22. Despite the ongoing crypto slump, Google is focussing on finetuning its global Web3 teams.

Ramchandani confirmed his hiring in Google's Web3 team in a LinkedIn post after Mitesh Agarwal, the Managing Director - Google Cloud Customer, Partner Engineering and Web3 team, congratulated the newly appointed.

“Excited for the next step in my career! I look forward to growing Google Cloud's Web3 efforts in APAC and working with the great people there,” he wrote.

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The search engine giant has been exploring opportunities to delve deeper into the crypto and Web3 sectors.

In October, Google and Coinbase revealed plans for a strategic partnership, which would allow select customers to pay for the cloud services using crypto from early 2023.

At the time, Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, had said that Google aims to make building in Web3 faster and easier.

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In fact, Alphabet, the parent of Google has invested a whopping sum of $1.5 billion (roughly Rs. 11,910 crore) in the blockchain industry, a Blockdata analysis had claimed back in August.

As for Ramchandani, the move marks a significant milestone after he suffered the blow of the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange that shook up the overall crypto market and left his previous company BlockFi high and dry.

BlockFi had at the time said that the liquidity crisis was caused due to its exposure to FTX via loans. In a court filing, BlockFi listed its assets and liabilities as being between $1 billion (roughly Rs. 8,170 crore) and $10 billion (roughly Rs. 81,700 crore).

Will crypto tax hurt the industry in India? We discuss this on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Further reading: Crypto, Google, India

Radhika Parashar

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Radhika Parashar is a senior correspondent for Gadgets 360. She has been reporting on tech and telecom for the last three years now and will be focussing on writing about all things crypto. Besides this, she is a major sitcom nerd and often replies in Chandler Bing and Michael Scott references. For tips or queries you could reach out to her at RadhikaP@ndtv.com. More