MAM
Snapdeal appoints Saurabh Bansal to head Category Management
MUMBAI Snapdeal has announced that Saurabh Bansal will take on a new role as Vice President and Head of Category Management. In his earlier role as VP – Merchandising Strategy, Bansal lead Analytics and Merchandize Planning at Snapdeal.
In his new role, Bansal will be responsible for end to end category management and would focus on the continued expansion of product and brand assortment on Snapdeal through strategic partnerships.
Congratulating Bansal on the role, Snapdeal co founder Rohit Bansal said, “Over the last two years of his tenure, Bansal has played a key role in strengthening product planning and merchandizing pipelines, immensely growing Snapdeal’s consumer reach and resonance. I am confident that in this elevated role, he will bring a sharper focus to Snapdeal’s vision of bringing 20 million daily transacting users to our platform by 2020.”
Speaking about his appointment, Bansal said, “At Snapdeal, we are on an exciting mission together to build India’s most reliable and frictionless commerce ecosystem. I look forward to this new chapter in my Snapdeal journey. Along with my dedicated team, I am committed to making Snapdeal a part of India’s everyday life, by offering the widest assortment of products to our consumers across the country.”
Prior to joining Snapdeal in March 2014, Bansal led strategy and new business initiatives at Jubilant Enpro and was responsible for many bottom line impacting innovations at leading retailers like Metro Cash & Carry and Spencer’s Retail Limited. Bansal holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and an MBA from the SP Jain Institute of Management.
Brands
Google completes $32 billion Wiz deal to boost AI and cloud security
Wiz joins Google Cloud but keeps multi-cloud support across rival platforms
NEW YORK: Google has completed its $32 billion acquisition of cloud security company Wiz, marking the biggest deal in the tech giant’s history and signalling a major push to strengthen security in the era of artificial intelligence and multi-cloud computing.
The New York-headquartered cybersecurity firm will join Google Cloud while continuing to operate under the Wiz brand. Crucially, the company will maintain support for multiple cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud, reflecting the reality that most large organisations run their systems across several cloud providers.
Google said the acquisition is designed to help organisations build and scale applications more securely as businesses and governments increasingly move critical systems and data to the cloud. At the same time, the rapid adoption of generative AI has introduced new cybersecurity risks, with attackers also using AI to launch faster and more sophisticated attacks.
Wiz has built a reputation for simplifying cloud security. Its platform maps entire cloud environments, identifying vulnerabilities, potential attack paths and misconfigurations before they can be exploited. By connecting insights from code, cloud infrastructure and runtime environments, it allows security and engineering teams to detect and fix risks early in the development cycle.
Bringing Wiz into Google Cloud will create what the company describes as a unified security platform capable of detecting, preventing and responding to threats across cloud and AI environments. The combined offering will also integrate Google’s own security capabilities, including threat intelligence tools, security operations platforms and the cybersecurity expertise of Mandiant.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the move reflects the growing importance of security as more organisations rely on AI and cloud technologies. “Keeping people safe online has always been part of Google’s mission,” he said, adding that the partnership will help organisations innovate with greater confidence.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, said the goal is to make security an enabler rather than a roadblock for businesses building modern applications. He noted that the combined technologies will simplify the complex task of protecting hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
For Wiz, the acquisition opens the door to global scale while keeping its core philosophy intact. Co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport said the company remains committed to an open, multi-cloud approach and will continue supporting customers regardless of where their workloads run.
Over the past year, Wiz has expanded its platform to address emerging risks tied to AI applications, including tools that help organisations monitor AI usage, detect AI-specific vulnerabilities and secure AI workloads during runtime.
With Google’s infrastructure, artificial intelligence capabilities and security ecosystem now behind it, Wiz plans to accelerate development of its platform while continuing to serve enterprises, governments and start-ups operating across different cloud environments.
For Google Cloud, the acquisition adds a powerful piece to its security puzzle as competition intensifies among global cloud providers. For customers, it promises a future where building fast in the cloud does not have to come at the expense of staying secure.
