WhatsApp India head, Meta India’s director of Public Policy quit
WhatsApp‘s India head Abhijit Bose and the director of public policy for Meta in India, Rajiv Aggarwal, have resigned, a Meta spokesperson said on Tuesday. The company has appointed Shivnath Thukral as its new director for public policy in India, the spokesperson added.
Meta India public policy head, WhatsApp India head resign
A Meta spokesperson said both of the exits were unrelated to the current layoffs.
Notably, recently, Meta India head Ajit Mohan also put down his papers on November 3 to join rival Snap.
The reason behind the stepping down of these officials has not been revealed. As per a statement by WhatsApp head Will Cathcart to TechCrunch, “I want to thank Abhijit Bose for his tremendous contributions as our first Head of WhatsApp in India. His entrepreneurial drive helped our team deliver new services that have benefited millions of people and businesses. There is so much more WhatsApp can do for India and we’re excited to continue helping advance India’s digital transformation.”
Facebook has been facing regulatory challenges in India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration has been tightening laws governing Big Tech companies.
WhatsApp, the messaging service owned by Meta, has also been seeking to ramp up its payments service in a highly competitive market and take on more established players such as Alphabet Inc’s Google Pay, Ant Group-backed Paytm and Walmart’s PhonePe.
A couple of months back, the head of WhatsApp’s India payment business, Manesh Mahatme, also quit to join Amazon India.
For the unversed, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sacked 11,000 employees globally, amounting to 13 percent of its total workforce.
“At the start of Covid, the world rapidly moved online and the surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth. Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended,” said Zuckerberg in a blog post. He added, “I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected.”
–With inputs from Reuters
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