GoDaddy’s India & Australia MD & Vice President, Rajiv Sodhi, has formerly handed in his notice, and will be joining Microsoft in December to lead their Cloud and Server Business according to the Times of India.
Sodhi joined GoDaddy in June 2012, with the responsibility of driving internet adoption among small business in India, which according to Sodhi, as of July 2016 is their biggest market outside of the US.
GoDaddy was the first internet domain registrar and web hosting company to offer products and customer services in the various regional Indian languages, including Hindi, Marathi and Tamil.
GoDaddy is currently based out of Gurgaon, the head office, along with a call center in Hyderabad. The India call center went from 3,000 calls per month, to 2,500 calls per day as of July 2016. This is testament to the leadership of Sodhi, who later also became responsible for GoDaddy’s presence in Australia too.
The appointment of Sodhi in 2012 as Managing Director of GoDaddy India, was a big step for the company, being the first international executive appointed by the company, and the start of a significant expansion.
Sodhi stateson his LinkedIn page for his current GoDaddy role, that part of their success was his efforts to drive massive awareness of internet adoption on mass media and online channels targeting SMB’s. With those efforts to “bridge the digital divide” coupled with their efforts to localize their offerings while promoting customer care, GoDaddy has gone from strength to strength.
In a statement provided to The Whir Andrew Low Ah Kee, Executive Vice President at GoDaddy International, said:
“Sodhi was instrumental in helping GoDaddy expand its business in India over the past four years. India is a priority market for GoDaddy and we’re excited about the growth opportunities in the region. GoDaddy will be hiring a new managing director in India as the company accelerates its plans to help small businesses throughout the country build powerful digital identities.”
There has been no statement on the reasons Sodhi has decided to leave GoDaddy, but he is a Microsoft old-timer, having previously worked at Microsoft between 2002 and 2012. The previous roles at Microsoft were all based in India, and included the following:
- Developer Evangelist – Pre-Sales and Consulting of Distributed Platforms to Enterprise Customers (January 2002 – 2003)
- Lead – ISV Partners and Alliances (2003 – April 2007)
- Director, Developer Marketing & Internet Strategy (May 2007 – August 2008)
- Director, Cloud/SaaS Sales and Marketing (September 2008 – September 2011)
- Director – India SMB, Cloud and Software Sales through Distribution and Reseller Channel Management (September 2011 – June 2012)
With the added experience gained at GoDaddy, it is no wonder that Sodhi will be leading the Cloud and Server business. It is unclear at this stage whether this will be within India, or elsewhere. While his knowledge of the India market has been invaluable, there are some initial reports that he will manage the Cloud and Server business on a global level, going head to head with Amazon Web Services. As such, he is likely to manage Microsoft products such as Azure, Sharepoint, Exchange as well as other solutions.