From Georgia Tech to Google

Newbie Google executive Vikas Gupta says he is a bold businessman because of an experience he had as a student at Georgia Tech.

Gupta, who earned a masters degree in computer science at Tech in 1998, said an accident during a school trip helped pave his path to Internet success.

"I think it changed my perspective on life," Gupta said about a whitewater rafting trip he took with the Tech outdoors club.

When he fell from the raft into treacherous Class 6 rapids, Gupta struggled to swim to safety. His classmates had all but "given up on me surviving," he said. 

Somehow Gupta managed to surface.

The experience had a profound impact on his life, Gupta said during a recent phone call from California where he now lives.

After the scare, Gupta said he approached risky situations with less fear. "What's the worst that can happen? It will just be an experience" is the attitude he adopted.

It has brought him success to be bold.

The Big Sale

Gupta today works as head of consumer payments at Google.

The global Internet giant in August 2010 paid millions for Jambool, a start-up tech company Gupta founded in 2006 that he says has gone "through multiple successful iterations -- from leading social app developer to now the leading virtual goods monetization platform."

Gupta's goal is to offer seamless transactions on the web, per a letter he wrote around the time of the acquisition.

"He is already having a big impact at Google," company spokeswoman Katelin Todhunter-Gerberg said. She said Gupta just launched a new Google product called In-App Payments, which simplifies online payments for web application developers and others.

"His early interests in networks and digital payments helped him get to where he is today," Todhunter-Gerberg said.

His Path of Payments

Gupta said his time in Atlanta helped spring his success.

"At Georgia Tech, we kind of explored a lot of ideas that didn't go anywhere," said Gupta, who moved from India to Atlanta around the time of the Olympic Games to study at the institute. He enjoyed the warm climate and made a close circle of friends at Tech that he still keeps up with. "Those are things that last a lifetime," he said.

After finishing grad school in 1998, Gupta went to work for a start-up tech company in Atlanta. A year later, he journeyed to the West Coast for a job at Amazon. At the time, the company "was very much like a startup," he said. Gupta was given the "massive opportunity" of completely rebuilding the payment system for the online marketplace.

"Amazon was a great learning experience for the seven years I was there," Gupta said. 

In 2006, he and a dozen or more of his colleagues left Amazon to form Jambool. Gupta said it was probably one of the worst times to raise money to launch the company.

But he said the poor economy turned out to be a good thing for the start-up. It didn't get "lost in the crowd" like it might have if the good times were rolling and everyone could bud a new business.

When "Google came knocking" in 2010, Gupta said, "it was a fork in the road. We had to make a choice."

He wasn't sure about his or the start-up's future under Google rule. But as he learned at Tech, even when the waters are rough you still can fight your way to the surface.

"We decided to take that risk," Gupta said. "Making that first leap was the biggest leap of them all ... We've achieved quite a bit since then."