Amarjit Singh Batra and the habit of starting over

The old phone still worked. That was part of the problem. A newer one had arrived, but the previous model could remain in a drawer, quietly graduating from possession to household archaeology. For Amarjit Singh Batra, helping build OLX in India meant getting people to reconsider that drawer. A website could connect a buyer and a seller. First, someone had to decide that the phone ought to leave the house.

When Batra joined OLX in 2009, consumer-to-consumer classifieds required explanation. The familiar examples from elsewhere, garage sales and car-boot sales, offered an imperfect guide to Indian habits. Buying something new was easily understood. Inviting a stranger to buy something old required a little more imagination. The commercial opportunity depended on an ordinary domestic decision.

Years later, he would join Spotify and confront another deeply established set of preferences. Indians already loved music. Persuading them to discover it through a particular service, and sometimes pay for that service, presented a fresh assignment. Between the used phone and the next song lies a career spent paying attention to what people will actually do.

An education in things that move

Batra grew up in an Army family, living in different parts of India and spending much of his childhood in Jabalpur. He returned to his hometown, Ludhiana, to study engineering, then completed an MBA at University Business School in Chandigarh. The geography matters: his early life took him through several versions of the country he would later help global companies understand.

His working life included international trade and business-to-business marketplaces before the consumer brands arrived. At Baazee and eBay India, his responsibilities ranged across auctions, cross-border trade, category management, advertising, partnerships and new businesses. That is a useful collection of jobs for someone who will eventually need to make a marketplace work. It puts the merchandise, the merchant and the customer in the same field of view.

By January 2013, writing about mobile classifieds, he was describing the business from inside OLX. His duties included developing the category, building partnerships and encouraging engagement. The job description contained a revealing verb: develop. The category itself still needed work.

The sofa needed a reason to leave

OLX’s proposition became easier to grasp when it met a recognisable need. People upgrading their phones could release money from the previous model. Someone moving to a city for work could furnish a home without buying everything new. A household might welcome the money, the space, or both. The second sofa had to justify its tenancy.

Batra’s accounts of the early market repeatedly returned to this gap between owning something and deciding to sell it. The platform facilitated contact; buyers and sellers dealt directly with one another. That arrangement put unfamiliar people into a transaction that had often depended on established contacts or intermediaries.

His observations also complicated the idea of a single target customer. Older people might supply the possessions, while younger relatives handled the sale. Younger buyers wanted useful things at accessible prices. In those cases, an advertisement represented a small family collaboration before it ever reached another household.

The communication had to make these possibilities feel ordinary. OLX’s first television commercial appeared in 2011. Campaigns including “Yahan Sab Kuch Bikta Hai” and “Phone ko banao ‘Sell Phone’” turned the practical act of listing goods into a familiar invitation. The phone pun was doing a job. It attached a new action to an object people already understood.

There was recognition along the way. Batra received the IDMA Digital Person of the Year award in 2014 and the International Advertising Association’s India award for e-commerce Marketer of the Year in 2015. The honours fitted a task in which marketing had to explain a behaviour as well as a brand.

A market in the palm of a hand

The device carrying the message mattered too. In a June 2016 interview, Batra said mobile apps accounted for 90 per cent of OLX traffic. He described used cars, phones and bikes as important categories, and spoke about sales happening within a day, sometimes within an hour. These were his observations at that point in the business, rather than a promise about every listing.

The contrast with a phone left indefinitely in a drawer is instructive. Once a seller had a reason to list and a buyer had a reason to respond, the exchange could move quickly. Years of persuasion could end in a transaction arranged over an afternoon. Convenience looks wonderfully effortless when someone has already done the explaining.

The library with a return condition

Inside the company, Batra had another habit in mind. He began reading more seriously in 2007 and wanted colleagues to have the same opportunity. An OLX office library started with self-development and management titles, then widened its range. Reading sessions and book reviews gave the books a life beyond the shelf.

Employees could request a book and borrow it. Returning it came with a small obligation: write a note about what they had read. It is a pleasantly economical management device. The reader got a book; colleagues got a reason to consider reading it; the library acquired something more useful than a tidy row of spines.

“I don’t read fiction,” Batra said in 2016. His own interests ran towards marketing and corporate personalities. Yet the organisational point was broader than his personal taste. He wanted people to keep developing as the business grew, with room to apply new knowledge and make mistakes. He argued that learning takes time to show results. Hiring a learning professional would scarcely change a culture overnight.

“I don’t read fiction.”

Amarjit Singh Batra, 2016

That patience offers a useful companion to his consumer work. A colleague learning a skill and a customer trying an unfamiliar service each need more than an instruction. The library made his approach tangible: put something useful within reach, then make the next step easy enough to take.

Then the product became a song

Batra joined Spotify in April 2018 to build its India operation. The service launched locally in February 2019. He arrived with experience of introducing a global platform to Indian consumers, although music brought its own institutions, loyalties and economics. A classifieds listing has a fairly clear destination: a completed exchange. A listener can wander all evening.

His launch-day account of the offering treated India as a collection of musical interests. There were film playlists such as Bollywood Butter and Kollywood Cream, actor-led “Starring” collections, independent music, Punjabi music and hip-hop. City-specific playlists added another way into the catalogue. An affection for a place could sit beside an affection for a performer.

He also spoke about taking Indian artists to listeners overseas. The ambition ran in both directions: international music finding Indian fans, and Indian performers finding audiences beyond the country. Local understanding was part of an international proposition. A playlist title could carry more cultural information than a broad claim about personalisation.

By 2022, he was discussing artist programmes including RADAR India and EQUAL, alongside the development of podcasts. In a conversation with Karthik Nagarajan that year, he described the organisation’s approach and the greeting given to new employees: “welcome to the band”. For a leader who had once encouraged colleagues to exchange book reviews, it was another invitation to participate.

A small ticket to a larger habit

Payment needed its own experiments. In April 2022, Batra described Premium Mini options that offered access for a day or a week. He pictured listeners preparing for a party or a weekend away, alongside those ready for monthly or annual plans. These were pricing examples from that interview, tailored to moments when someone might want to try paying.

The reasoning echoes the unused phone. A person could understand the value of an upgrade while hesitating over the unfamiliar action needed to obtain it. A small purchase offered a manageable beginning. Family, student and duo plans addressed other circumstances. Batra said the company was still examining what worked.

By May 2026, he was still describing pricing through the idea of giving listeners meaningful choice. There is a certain consistency in that vocabulary. The practical question remains what fits into someone’s day, budget and existing behaviour. The answer can differ between two people in the same room.

A bigger map, a local ear

In July 2022, his responsibilities expanded to General Manager for South Asia, the Middle East and Africa, while he remained Managing Director of Spotify India. The larger map gave the local work a wider setting. By April 2026, he had completed eight years at the company.

His recent interviews place Indian artists closer to the centre of that work. In October 2026, he discussed Spotify’s figures for 2025: Indian artists had generated nearly 335 billion streams worldwide, and 40 per cent of their royalties came from outside India. He also pointed to growth across regional languages. These platform figures describe a market extending beyond its home audience.

“The job is to grow the music industry,” he said earlier in 2026. That aspiration gives his role a demanding measure. A service needs listeners; artists need discovery, an audience and a way to continue making work. Batra’s argument is that these interests belong in the same business conversation.

The next point belongs to someone else

Beyond the office, the racquet has remained a recurring companion. Batra played badminton at school, tennis at college and squash through his working years. He later took up pickleball. In 2025, he described playing with his son Ravtej, who had begun winning more often.

“Sport gave me the spirit of never giving up,” he said. The family match adds a welcome complication to an executive biography: the person accustomed to explaining a market still has to respond to the next shot. On that court, experience is useful. So is noticing that the other player has learned something.