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This is Kumar's second innings at Microsoft; he will drive strategy and business alliances for Bing in the APAC region.
Vinay Kumar, erstwhile CEO of StratosHear, a mobile media company, has joined Microsoft Corporation as the APAC head of strategy and alliances for Bing.com, Microsoft's web search engine. Kumar joined Microsoft in mid January and will be based in Gurgaon.
Vinay Kumar has over 20 years of industry experience in the internet, mobile, digital media, software and technology industry, in a variety of general management roles in India and USA, with global responsibility. Between StartosHear and Bing, Kumar also had a small stint with e-learning company Liqvid as COO from February to December, 2012.
Between October 2008 and January 2012, as the CEO of StratosHear, Kumar was responsible for driving the mobile ad-platform and a mobile ad network (MobiAdz). Earlier, he was director at Times Internet (2005-07), where he was responsible for driving businesses for portals such as Indiatimes, TimesOfIndia.com and EconomicTimes.com.
The new assignment will be Kumar's second innings at Microsoft as, in the US, he had worked at Microsoft for nearly 10 years (from 1996 to 2005). Kumar worked on MSN, Windows and Internet Explorer in product management and product marketing. He conceptualised and led the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) initiative in 2001 to build long term strategy to expand Microsoft's presence in key emerging nations and secured over $100 million for the initiative.