Waze CEO Neha Parikh to Exit Company Following Navigation App’s Integration Into Google’s Mapping Products
- The Indian American said she will partner with the Geo team over the next few months “to help set the app up for “outsized success in its new home.”
Waze CEO Neha Parikh will exit the community-driven navigation map app that was acquired by Google. The move comes months after Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said “he wanted to make the Mountain View company more efficient as it faces mounting pressure to cut costs,” the Silicon Valley Business Journal reported.
A Google spokesperson told Reuters that it will “integrate Waze, which it acquired in 2013 for $1 billion, into Google Geo, its portfolio of real-world mapping products that include Google Maps, Google Earth, and Street View.”
Parikh, 42, announced her departure in a LinkedIn post, writing that she will depart the company next year, as “there will no longer be a Waze org led by a CEO.” over the next few months, she will “partner with the Geo team at Google to help set Waze up for outsized success in its new home,” she wrote. Referring to her post on the first day as Waze CEO to “make magic happen,” she said that since then she has “learned is that our Waze community IS the magic and I have been beyond privileged to be part of it.”
Waze was founded in Israel in 2008 by Ehud Shabtai, Amir Shinar, and Uri Levine. The crowdsourced navigation app quickly grew in popularity, praised for its ability to take into account traffic and construction in real time. Currently, it has 150 million monthly active users.
Before joining Waze in July 2021, Parikh was president of the travel website Hotwire, becoming the youngest and first female to lead the travel website. She started her career in 2000 as a management consultant at Pricewaterhouse Coopers.
After getting her MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, she joined Expedia, where she served in a variety of positions at two of the corporation’s subsidiaries: Hotels.com and Hotwire. She is also a board member of the online used car retailer Carvana and Tailwind Acquisition Corp.
In a press release announcing Parikh’s appointment to the board of Carvana in April 2019, Parikh said: “On my first visit to the Carvana offices, I took a picture of their prominently displayed values, one of which is ‘Your next customer may be your mom,’ which I love. Relentless customer focus has been central to my career, so I’m thrilled to align with a company that puts their customers first.”