Former head of search at Google, Amit Singhal joins Paytm board

Former head of Search at Google, Amit Singhal, is set to join Paytm’s board of directors at a ti me when the on line payments and e-commerce company is gea ring up for its payments bank launch.

It is expected that Singhal’s presence will give Paytm the technical edge in rolling out financial products. Singhal will be the 11th member on One97’s (the Noida-based company that runs Paytm) board. Other board members include, Ratan Tata, Tata Sons chairman emeritus, Saif Partners directors Vivek Mathur and Ravi Adusumalli and Alibaba representative Jing Xiandong.

“We believe his strong expertise in artificial intelligence and experience in building large technical teams will be extremely valuable to Paytm as we continue to grow rapidly ,” said Vijay Shekhar Sharma,founder & CEO of Paytm.

Singhal had been instrumental in shaping Google Search to seamlessly work across desktop, mobile and other devices. A Google Fellow, and former head of the core ranking team, he served for over fifteen years in the company . “I have always admired Paytm for its innovative payment products and vision for financial inclusion. I’m delighted to be joining their board,” said Singhal.

Singhal, 48, joined Google in 2000 as employee number 176.

 Along with Paytm’s other board members such as Neeraj Arora of WhatsApp and Ruchi Sanghvi, Facebook’s first woman engineer, Singhal recently picked up shares employee stock option plan (ESOP) at the Alibaba-backed company that was valued at around $3.5 billion in its last round of funding in 2015.These were employee stock option plans (ESOP) that were sold by senior executives at Paytm.