Former Google Search VP Lakshmi Shankar joins Together Fund as general partner

Lakshmi Shankar, who was vice president - product strategy and insights, Google Search, has been roped in by Together Fund, a SaaS and AI-focused venture capital firm, as general partner.

In his new role, Shankar will head the venture capital's office in San Francisco, and will focus on investments in early age AI startups in India and the US, as per reports.

Shankar began his career as product lead - IBMS's Master Data Management, IBM, IBM Global Business Services where he was responsible for product direction and future product road map, product architecture and feature set, balancing sales/ marketing priorities with engineering constraints and supporting technical diligence for acquisition targets. He developed large scale solutions for the Retail and CPG sectors, using IBM e-Commerce, m-Commerce, Multi-channel and Merchandising solutions.

He then worked across Ernst & Young and Twitter, and at Google, Shankar was responsible for the strategy and long-term growth for Google Search and the evolution of the product based on new user needs, market changes and regulatory expectations.

He oversaw and delivered the forward looking strategy for Google Search, helped set the product OKRs and the investment priorities, as part of annual planning. He launched Search Generative Experience (SGE) at Google I/O 2023 - Google Search’s AI response to Microsoft New Bing and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. He managed 30 product strategists and business analysts. Influenced 8000+ product development team.

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