Rishi Jaitly is co-founder and CEO of Times Bridge, the global investment and partnership arm of The Times Group of India, South Asia’s oldest media company. Jaitly previously worked for Twitter and Google.
What’s the biggest opportunity in your region that’s often overlooked?
India’s a continent unto itself! I’ve always believed India to be a microcosm of all the world’s conditions — including digital conditions — and a place worth committing to, beyond its English-speaking, Western-TV-show-streaming veneer.
What’s the most common misconception about your market?
That market entry is easy! Given the favorable facts of scale, openness, and English, India offers many from around the world the initial highs of early market growth — but few the fulfillment of long-term endurance.
What was the most important decision of your career?
Reversing the immigration of my parents, by leaving California for a stint in Delhi. The chance to help establish and evangelize Google’s business and mission in India — at a time when the internet itself was nascent in the market — helped me cultivate a kind of creativity, entrepreneurship, and leadership I never knew before.
How are you preparing your company for the end of the pandemic?
Filling up our bus! When the pandemic ends, and a familiar kind of togetherness resumes, I want my teams to feel new nourishment from one another—and that will flow, in part, from rallying and recruiting new people to serve Times Bridge’s mission today.
*This 3 Minutes With interview first appeared in the Rest of World weekly newsletter. Sign up here.
