Oath hires former Alibaba Group executive as President & COO

Today, Oath, a Verizon (NYSE, Nasdaq: VZ) subsidiary announces that K. Guru Gowrappan will join the company as President and COO. Guru previously served as Global Managing Director at Alibaba Group. He will play a pivotal role in leading the company’s operations and global growth strategy, as Oath enters its second year. Leveraging his experience in scaling businesses globally, Guru will work with CEO Tim Armstrong and the Oath and Verizon leadership teams to cement Oath’s position as a powerhouse of trusted media and technology brands including AOL, BUILD, HuffPost, MAKERS, TechCrunch, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News and Yahoo Sports. He will report to Armstrong.

“Oath serves a billion global consumers and the world’s most important brands in the most disruptive area of the economy and adding Guru as President and COO will accelerate our clear vision into a platform for growth for years to come,” said Tim Armstrong, CEO, Oath. “We have an amazing ecosystem of digital brands and platforms, the backing of the best mobile company in the world - Verizon, and a culture centered around the best external and internal talent we can work with as a company - and those strengths are only going to get stronger by adding Guru to help lead the company into the future.”

“There’s no other industry that can change history like ours can, and no company better poised for rapid global growth than Oath,” said Gowrappan, President and COO, Oath. “Very few companies in the world have the ecosystem potential that Oath has. The content and technology across Oath and Verizon creates a huge market opportunity, and I look forward to joining the team to help the company through the next phase of global growth.”    

In his role as President & COO, Guru will be responsible for the day-to-day operating businesses at Oath including all of the consumer and customer brands, operations, products, and technology. 

At Alibaba, Guru was the Global Managing Director focused on international expansion for key consumer and enterprise products across ecommerce, entertainment & media, payments and the entire commerce enabling stack. Previously, he was Chief Operating Officer at Quixey, a mobile startup, and prior to that he was the COO for Growth / Emerging Initiatives at Zynga. He has also held several leadership roles at Yahoo and Overture.