User Profile

Gautam Thakar is the global CEO of OLX Autos, part of the $150B+ Naspers group. In this role Gautam leads a worldwide organization of more than 6,000 employees across Asia, Europe, Latam, and the United States with a mission of building the worlds most trusted marketplace for cars. Gautam has deep experience in pioneering digital marketplaces and a track-record of driving innovation operating in a global multi cultural environment. Over the last 25 years , he has managed teams in over 15 countries and has lived in India, Philippines and the USA. He started his career at P&G where he was a brand manager for detergents in the Asia business. After P&G , he was a part of the founding management team of baazee.com which pioneered ecommerce in India. Baazee was was acquired by eBay in 2005 after which Gautam was country manager of eBay India. He then moved to California as a Senior Director for Marketing for eBay's International markets. Thereafter Gautam took over as CEO of Shopping.com, which eBay had acquired for over $600M, and was responsible for operations in the US, Germany, UK, France, Australia and Israel. He relocated to Washington DC for his next stint as CEO of LivingSocial; a venture backed local services marketplace that was eventually sold to Groupon. Gautam moved back to India in 2018 as CEO of Star Sports (acquired by the Walt Disney company) before joining his current role. Gautam enjoys mentoring and advising start up founders and has worked as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Revolution Ventures and is a Venture partner at the NextGen Venture partners. Gautam has a Bachelor of Commerce and Economics from the Sydenham College and an MBA from IIM-Lucknow where he was awarded the Citibank leadership award. Gautam loves sports (he is teaching his 6 year old daughter tennis, his 10 year old son cricket and and learning badminton from his wife). He is on track to meet his bucket list goal of visiting 50 countries and his more recent creative explorations include sketching and short story writing.