Reddit appoints Durgesh Kaushik as VP of International Growth

Reddit, the social news aggregation and discussion platform, has been striving to make its online space more accessible to users around the world. As part of its internationalisation efforts, the company has appointed Durgesh Kaushik in a new role as Vice President of International Growth.

This comes three years after Reddit set up offices in London, marking the initial stage of its international growth strategy. The company has since extended its reach by opening additional offices in five international locations, including Australia and Amsterdam and establishing an entity in Singapore. Keeping their global objective in mind, Reddit is unwavering in its commitment to becoming more relevant and accessible to global audiences.

During this period, it has also increased the size of its local sales teams to expand its global ads business, scaled up local teams, and invested heavily in product and community experiences. As a result, the company is observing double-digit growth in DAU outside the United States, with almost 20% of both its workforce and advertising income coming from outside the US. In the past year alone, users from over 150 countries have accessed Reddit.

In a strategic push for internationalisation, Durgesh Kaushik, who joined Reddit last year as VP of APAC and Emerging Markets Growth, will now lead the company's strategy to expand user adoption across all core regions. His new role aims to align the platform with local cultures through ingenious product innovation and community experiences, thus fostering the growth of a broader, more diverse Reddit user base.

Expressing his vision, Durgesh said, "Being a truly international platform means everyone, everywhere, can successfully create and participate on Reddit. Growing local ecosystems that inspire a sense of belonging not only aligns with our internationalisation strategy, but also resonates with the Reddit experience."

To integrate local cultures into the platform, Reddit has worked with moderators from various countries like the UK, Germany, and France to create local communities and to make the Reddit experience more personalised for users. The company has also initiated Reddit-led events, like the creation of local Reddit Avatars tied to cultural events and AMA sessions with local celebrities, garnering millions of views and interactions.

To further enhance the user experience, Reddit is working to break language barriers. The platform now supports the translation of posts into eight different languages and continues to invest in machine-learning capabilities to make its global repository more accessible to everyone, irrespective of language.

The company is also helping users discover local communities based on factors like trending local content and culturally relevant subreddits via the Communities Tab. It has made efforts to understand user experiences better through testing and optimised Reddit experience based on findings, such as refining the onboarding progression for new international users.

"Our internationalisation efforts serve as a test bed for wider platform innovation," said Reddit Chief Product Officer Pali Bhat, and highlighted the platform's potential to grow outside the United States and beyond English. Identified globally as a platform where the "discussion, passion and community is truly unmatched", Reddit continues to build on its international foundation striving to bring community and belonging to everyone.