Asia-Pacific Power List 2022: Sapna Chadha, Google

Sapna Chadha

Vice president, marketing, India and Southeast Asia
Google
Singapore
Member since 2020

Sapna Chadha first joined the Power List in 2020, and she stays on this list for a third consecutive year. As a key marketer at Google for almost eight years, she started in India and was promoted to vice president of marketing for India and Southeast Asia in late 2021. 

To promote gender equity in India and Southeast Asian countries, Chadha invested in building a Voice Search platform, ‘Bolne se sab hoga’ (speaking out makes everything possible), in 2021. A series of campaigns from Google presented how information from search (via voice) can empower women and how information can break barriers and lead to progress. #SearchForChange drove awareness in India to overcome gender bias and move forward. Within this, the International Women's Day outdoor campaign was rolled out across seven cities and featured 18 inspiring women. It reached some 19 million users on Instagram and nine million on Twitter. 

Chadha also launched the Voice Search campaign in Indonesia through a video inspired by the Gen Z rock metal hijabi girl band Voice of Baceprot to empower young women to find their voices. The IWD campaign created 23 million social impressions, over 70 pieces of media coverage, and 2.8 million views on YouTube.

Chadha also participated in Google's charitable arm Google.org Impact Challenge for Women and Girls last year. Given that one of the winners was from Southeast Asia, the ‘Women's Forest Stewardship in Indonesia’ project will empower 1,000 women across 15 villages to participate in community forest management and improve their economic livelihoods.  

To bridge the digital gap in India, Chadha announced Google Classroom Offline last year when the pandemic worsened in the country. Through this programme, students could work offline when they had no access to the internet. Recently, she helped launch the Practise Problem feature on Google Search to support parents and students to get assistance from top education providers and reading groups to monitor and assist reading for students who need help. Chadha also led skills-training programmes in Singapore, Indonesia, and India, working together with governments and businesses to conduct digital training and offer scholarships. 

Chadha is a long-time champion of diversity and inclusion in her work and industry contributions. Not only does she lead DEI for the Asia-Pacific marketing unit, she also sits on the Google Asia-Pacific DEI Council and was a winner at the 2021 Campaign Asia-Pacific’s Women Leading Change Awards in the Diversity & Inclusion Champion category. She also penned five inclusive marketing principles for Google in 2021. 

Chadha can be found on Twitter at: @SappyChadha