Coinbase Hires Google Shopping VP To Improve Cryptocurrency Exchange, Wallet And More

Coinbase has welcomed a new chief product officer in Surojit Chatterjee, a former Google executive.

The announcement was made on Wednesday via a blog post by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong. Armstrong tells of how Chatterjee, through his 11 years in Google, helped people find and compare products. He also mentioned Chatterjee's early involvement in Google's mobile search ads, a product that has now grown to generate billions of revenues per year.

And prior to taking on the mantle of Product Management VP for Google Shopping, Chatterjee was also the head of product for Flipkart, which makes Chatterjee's experiences all the more so critical for Coinbase. Armstrong emphasized how Coinbase is a product-led company, and Chatterjee fits in that role as the company's goal is to make cryptocurrencies part of people's everyday lives through Coinbase's products.

"It's clear that Surojit's insights and experiences on the front lines of global commerce make him the perfect person to lead our product organization, help us continue our pace of repeatable innovation, and bring Coinbase products to the next billion crypto users around the world," Armstrong's blog post read.

Chatterjee also has a particular interest in crypto and tells two stories of the inconveniences he and his family experienced with the traditional financial system. He wrote about how his father stood in line for five hours to withdraw cash when India's prime minister demonetized and asked everyone to exchange their money (his father was 80 at that time).

Chatterjee also wrote about how it takes more than two hours just to withdraw money from the bank because of the queues to get a token and to get signatures verified.

These experiences convinced him of the hassles and common issues that cryptocurrencies have the potential to eliminate.

Quoted on a blog post, Chatterjee wrote, "I am excited about what crypto and blockchain technology can do to democratize our financial systems. I believe cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology can help open up the financial system for everyone by growing commerce and cross-border commerce, by lowering transaction costs and by providing higher security."

Chatterjee begins his new journey with Coinbase next week, and he'll help Coinbase organize its cryptocurrency exchange wallet, stablecoin, incentivized crypto education platform Earn and Coinbase Commerce, according to TechCrunch. Chatterjee also replace Jeremy Henrickson, the CPO of Coinbase who left in 2018