Google India's Pulkit Trivedi is tasked with driving the online sales higher.

PULKIT TRIVEDI
Head, E-commerce Vertical,
Google India
AGE: 39
GOAL IN LIFE: To be a part of transforming education in India.
BEST LEADERSHIP LESSON: Leaders produce leaders. The ability to build high-performance teams is the true testimony of strong leaders.

In January, Pulkit Trivedi took charge of Google's buzziest vertical in India - e-commerce. In 2014, goods and services worth $4 billion changed hands online in India and this is projected to touch $6 billion this year and rise to $50 billion by 2020. Google has a big part to play as host of the Great Online Shopping Festival where cars, diamonds and even homes get sold.

Trivedi, who joined Google in April 2012, is tasked with driving online sales higher. In his earlier role as Head of Technology at Google, he gained experience in shaping attitudes towards digital. "There has been significant shift in terms of how tech brands started seeing digital shaping their business growth," he says.

Trivedi's first big break came in 2003 at IBM where he was given charge of a multi-million-dollar project. At Intel, where he joined in 2005, after a one-year stint at Microsoft, Trivedi drove several initiatives around computer literacy and was nominated to manage the emerging talent and leadership initiative in 2011. An avid swimmer, Trivedi describes how at Intel he tried to launch a 'made for India' product. "I believed it could change the way the country would adapt to computing. But this failed," he says. "My biggest learning was how execution and speed-to-market holds the key in such initiatives."

Trivedi also taught consumer behaviour at IIT Roorkee for four years. "Pulkit brings passion, clarity of thought and phenomenal inter-personal skills to the table," says Professor Vinay Kumar Nangia, former Dean of IIT Roorkee who had spotted him at a conference. "His connection with the students was unique."