Manik Gupta, an investor and startup advisor who worked previously as Uber’s chief product officer and a Google product leader, has joined Microsoft as a corporate vice president for Teams Consumer, Skype, and GroupMe.
Gupta will oversee Microsoft’s “end-to-end consumer strategy, vision, and execution,” said Jeff Teper, corporate vice president of Microsoft 365, in a memo to employees announcing the hire. Teper said Gupta’s experience “will be invaluable to us building world-class consumer experiences across all of Microsoft.”
The hire signals a renewed focus on consumer technologies at Microsoft, which has experienced a renaissance under CEO Satya Nadella by concentrating on its roots in enterprise technology, productivity software and developer tools while transitioning its business and its customer base to the cloud.
Welcome Manik, I’m thrilled to have you join and look forward to the impact you will have.
— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) August 17, 2021
He oversaw more than 1,000 people at Uber across teams such as Product Management and Data Science during his 4-year stint at the transportation giant. He spent more than seven years at Google and was a product leader for Google Maps.
Gupta also founded an e-commerce startup in Singapore called BuyItTogether.co earlier in his career, and is currently an investor and advisor for early-stage startups.
He is scheduled to start at Microsoft Aug. 30, based in the Bay Area and reporting to Teper. Rohit Wad, corporate vice president, will now report to Gupta and oversee engineering for Teams Consumer, Skype, and GroupMe.
Microsoft Teams, the collaboration software that launched in 2017, has grown significantly during the pandemic. It now has 250 million monthly active users, up from 145 million in April.
