PayPal Appoints Rohan Mahadevan as Vice President for Asia

Rohan’s deep knowledge of PayPal’s products and capabilities to lead one of the company’s fastest-growing regions earned him the post.

PayPal announced last 3 September the appointment of Rohan Mahadevan as PayPal’s new vice president for Asia effective immediately and reporting to Rupert Keeley who has recently taken up a broader leadership role as PayPal’s senior vice president of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Asia Pacific. Based in Singapore, Mr. Mahadevan will provide strategic direction for the company’s fastest-growing region and will be responsible for increasing the company’s presence and capabilities to capitalize on the explosive growth of e-commerce and m-commerce across all Asian markets.

Mr. Mahadevan has been with PayPal since 2004 in various leadership roles. Prior to his current position, he held the dual roles of vice president of Global Cross Border Trade and vice president of Latin America. As VP of Global Cross Border Trade, he was responsible for defining and executing PayPal’s cross-border strategy to enable 113 million PayPal users to conveniently and safely purchase from international merchants in 190 markets. As VP of Latin America, he led the strategy and localization of PayPal’s services for domestic consumers and merchants and partners in Brazil and Mexico, opened up PayPal’s first offices in these markets with Spanish and Portuguese language support, and accelerated cross-border trade across this region, according to a PayPal report.

“I am delighted to welcome Rohan as our new Asia head as he brings exceptional leadership skills and a proven track record in building payment businesses in some of the world’s most dynamic economies,” said Mr. Keeley.“Rohan’s deep knowledge of PayPal’s products and capabilities will be invaluable as we deliver on our vision to enable secure payments anytime, anywhere and any way for millions of Asian consumers through PayPal’s innovative online and mobile commerce services.”

“I’m excited to take on this new role in Asia as we build up our business in many of the largest commerce markets in the world – from Japan to Greater China to India to Southeast Asia – and localise our global payment capabilities to address the different and unique needs of our merchants and consumers across Asia,” said Mr. Mahadevan. “Beyond enabling cross-border trade for local merchants to sell globally and for local consumers to buy securely from overseas, we have a golden opportunity to bring more payment innovation to the region and transform commerce in the large and accelerating Asian consumer markets.”

Rohan holds a Bachelor of Science in Physics from the California Institute of Technology, a PhD from Harvard University in the field of astrophysics, and was a post-doctoral scientist at Cambridge University, England.