Jyotindra “JT” Thacker, CTO & President - Technology, Reliance JIO, Mahesh Krishnaswamy, Project Taara COO, and Baris Erkmen, Project Taara CTO

In January, after almost seven years in the Bay Area at Google, I turned the leadership of my last pursuit, Project Taara over to my second in command, Mahesh Krishnaswamy and retired to return home to Colorado. Mahesh grew up in rural India and his trek to the US and eventually to Google is the kind of story they make movies about. He has been an incredible partner as we developed advanced wireless optical technology allowing for the delivery of affordable and abundant internet into regions like the villages he grew up in.

I want to express my gratitude and thanks both to Mahesh and also to Baris Erkmen, the technical visionary behind the wireless optical communications technology we developed, for their dedication and creativity in tackling such a difficult problem.

I was sad to leave the exceptional team we built, but it was time for me to step aside and let Mahesh take over on Taara and he is doing an amazing job in his new expanded roll.

What an honor and a privilege it was to get to work on such challenging and leading edge research and development during my Google tenure. We accomplished some pretty amazing things and we got to meet and work with such incredible partners in Africa, India, Latin America and Asia. I will always cherish the relationships we developed with such dedicated people working tirelessly to bring connectivity to the 3 billion people still unconnected in the world. My hat is off to each and every one of you and I look forward to following your achievements ahead.