New York — In a bid to spread its innovation, it seems like MapQuest is prepping a massive management shakeup. The wholly owned subsidiary of AOL Inc., over the weekend announced that it has hired an ex-Googler to run Mapquest out in Denver, as a VP of Product Management: Vijay R. Bangaru, who is the third executive hire in the last three months.
Bangaru will commence his duties at MapQuest’s Denver headquarters, and will spread innovation around mapping and location-based services, an area of huge opportunity for the company, as well as manage the overall user experience with regards to Mapquest consumer products, such as mobile apps, developer tools and services, besides extending key features that drive engagement, delight users and meet business customer needs.
“Bangaru brings to MapQuest deep knowledge of assimilated product development with tenured experience in product planning and an aptitude for solving real world consumer needs,” said Christian Dwyer, senior vice president and general manager, MapQuest. “Vijay has a strong track record of visualizing and delivering products to market, and the MapQuest team is delighted to welcome him to the Denver office.”
Bangaru joins MapQuest following his tenure with Google Docs and Google Apps, where he was most recently in charge for overseeing all aspects of product development from vision, feature specification, user interface design, technical design to partner relations and acquisitions.
Surprisingly, prior to his term with Google, Bangaru was a Program Manager for software monopolist Microsoft too, where he worked on the WinFS project and strategy for the SQL Server, and for a while he was also a software development engineer at Xilinx.
In addition, Bangaru joins other recent hires at MapQuest that include Patrick McDevitt, VP of Engineering, who was previously VP of Community Mapping at TomTom and Anke Corbin, VP of Marketing, is another recent addition to MapQuest continually growing talent base, joining the team following her tenure with Zenzi, where she was a Partner in Digital Marketing.
“Interestingly, Bangaru is a pretty smart catch for MapQuest.” — He graduated summa cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo, with a BS in Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering, and during his school he was bestowed with an $80,000 scholarship from William Tao and Associates, along with several awards for academic excellence.
In July 2010, MapQuest unfurled a new brand identity and user interface indeed, a UI that looks strikingly similar to Google Maps (an effort, perhaps, to compete with the uber popular mapping tool), working to reinvigorate the consumer experience with new features, free developer APIs and an investment in open-source mapping through OpenStreetMap.
Currently, MapQuest is the 20th most trafficked website on the Internet, reaching 1 in 5 users, according to reports released by comScore Media Metrix, for March 2011, where the company recorded a 42.7 million unique monthly visitors.
Nevertheless, the company’s strategic initiatives and award-winning work have helped attract top talent from a variety of industries.