Thrilling Headhunt: Triller Announces Tik Tok’s Raj Mishra as Head of Ops India

Former Country Manager at TikTok India, Raj Mishra will be heading the US-based photo and video sharing app Triller’s India operations. The LA based platform gained millions of users overnight after launching in India in the wake of the TikTok ban.

Raj Mishra

The move is strategic and evident of Triller’s big expansion plans in India. The company, which was recently acquired by Proxima Media, has over 100 employees in the country already

The move is strategic and evident of Triller’s big expansion plans in India. The company, which was recently acquired by Proxima Media, has over 100 employees in the country already. Triller has been gobbling up a huge portion of the video-sharing space in India, which was left vacant as a result of the ban on the Chinese app, TikTok, giving India’s homegrown apps like Mitron and Chingari a run for their money.

“With the world’s second-largest Internet market consumer base, India’s artists and creators have found a safe space for creative expression in Triller and a democratic stage to reach out to a global audience,” Mishra said in a statement.

Raj Mishra, a Strong Track Record

Mishra is known to have built a strong track record of driving significant growth in globally complex business environments over the past 13 years. His specialisations include driving aggressive strategies for sales and marketing, business growth (top and bottomline), and P&L Management for brands that aim for success in the ever-evolving social media landscape in India.

Read more: Triller Looks to Fill TikTok Gap in India

“I am incredibly honoured to be taking over the mantle in India and amplifying Triller’s presence in the country. My key purpose is to provide value to the community by strategically driving Triller as the go-to platform for millions to showcase and distribute their talent derivatives while building their social currencies” he said in a statement.

In his earlier role as Country Manager at TikTok India (erstwhile Musical.ly, where he incidentally was their first employee), Mishra was instrumental in driving growth for ByteDance in India by creating the local team, liaising with business partners and the creator community in India, and identifying and incubating talent with the potential to help the company gain popularity on the app.

Triller has been gobbling up a huge portion of the video-sharing space in India, after it was left vacant as a result of the ban of the Chinese app, TikTok, giving India’s homegrown apps like Mitron and Chingari a run for their money.

Under his leadership, Musical.ly became the most downloaded app on both Android and iOS. He also spearheaded the transition from musical.ly to TikTok and was responsible for the end to end rebranding process after acquisition in 2017. In 2019, he started spearheading strategy for one of Bytedance’s newly launched suite of products, Helo.

New Role at Triller

In his new role at Triller, Mishra will be leading and furthering the development of Triller’s products, operations, and overall business goals.

“The opportunity that Triller offers to artists is incredible and the significant milestones that the app has managed to make in such a short period with zero marketing spends, indicate its massive growth potential in India,” he said.

Mishra was instrumental in driving growth for ByteDance in India by creating the local team, liaising with business partners and the creator community in India, and identifying and incubating talent with the potential to help the company gain popularity on the app

Moving forward, the app, with currently over a whopping 250 million+ downloads worldwide, will explore strategic associations with key Indian partners and influencers. Triller has been luring a young target audience with artists and digital celebrities.

Read more: Should a Banned TikTok Benefit from Selling Indian User Data?

“We are thrilled to have Raj join our team and head the India operations. His valuable experience of working in the creators’ app space in India is a definite advantage for us and we are keen to explore his expertise to help us scale heights in the Indian ecosystem. His vast skill set and glocal understanding of Triller was deeply exciting to us and we are confident of his abilities to further accelerate Triller’s growth trajectory in India to become the topmost app of choice for artists all across the country,” Mike Lu, CEO at Triller said in a statement.