Lalitesh Katragadda
Lalitesh Katragadda is a technology entrepreneur and product visionary focused on building scalable solutions for financial inclusion, digital infrastructure, and community empowerment. He is the Founder and CEO of Indihood, a crowdsourcing platform that enables communities to collaboratively solve development challenges, and the Chief Product Officer of Avanti Finance, a technology-enabled financial inclusion platform expanding access to credit for underserved populations. A pioneer in crowdsourcing and inclusive technology, Katragadda created Google Map Maker, a transformative product that quadrupled the world’s digital mapping corpus, bringing maps to over 4 billion people across 187 countries that previously lacked digital geographic coverage. Prior to launching Indihood, he was a Co-Founder of Google India and served as its founding Joint Center Head, where he led multiple global initiatives including crowdsourced YouTube subtitles, large-scale translation datasets, Indic handwriting recognition, and Google Transliteration. Beyond the private sector, Katragadda has played a pivotal role in shaping national digital infrastructure. He architected the Fiber Grid for the state of Andhra Pradesh, the world’s largest greenfield optical network launched in 2014, and authored India’s National Open API Policy.
Lalitesh Katragadda Professional Experience / Academic History
Professional Experience
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Founder and CEO
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Country Head of India Products
Academic History
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Ph.D., Robotics
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M.S., Design Division
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M.S., Aerospace Engineering
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B.Tech., Aeronautical Engineering
Lalitesh Katragadda is the creator of Google Map Maker, a groundbreaking crowdsourcing platform that quadrupled the world’s digital mapping corpus and brought detailed maps to more than 4 billion people across 187 countries.
The platform has since been leveraged by the United Nations and global aid organizations to support disaster response and humanitarian relief efforts, helping rescue and assist millions worldwide.
At Google, Katragadda co-founded the company’s first international engineering center and served as Head of Products for Google India, where he led several high-impact, globally scaled initiatives.
His work included crowdsourced YouTube subtitles, large-scale translation corpora, Indic handwriting recognition, and Google Transliteration—projects designed to expand digital accessibility for non-English and emerging-market users.
TECHNOLOGY, POLICY & CONSULTING
Before Google, Katragadda briefly served on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University, where he founded the Lunar Rover Initiative, and later launched Sphereo, a robotics startup that became Google’s first acquisition in 2002.
A sought-after thought leader, Katragadda has spoken at TED, the Brookings Institution, and the White House on how the internet and digital platforms can transform the lives of the next five billion people.
He is an advisor to India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and a core contributor to Digital India and India Stack, where he has helped design foundational digital public infrastructure.
His contributions include authoring India’s Open API Policy, and advising on UPI 2.0, GSTN, India Stack, and data protection and consent architecture, shaping the systems that now power identity, payments, and financial services for over a billion people.