© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Facebook-parent Meta has appointed Sandhya Devanathan as the new Head and Vice President of its India business after the departure of Ajit Mohan. Devanathan will take over the role on January 1, 2023, and will report to Dan Neary, who is Meta’s Vice President for the APAC region. Devanathan joined the company in 2016 and helped build its Singapore and Vietnam business while also working on the company’s e-commerce initiatives in South East Asia. She will move back to India to lead the organisation and its strategy in India.
In 2020, she transitioned to a role where she led gaming for the APAC region. She is the Executive Sponsor for Women@APAC at Meta. Devanathan is also the global lead for Play Forward, which is a Meta initiative to improve diversity in the gaming industry. She also serves on the board of Pepper Financial Services.
Devanathan takes over as head of Meta’s India business at a tumultuous time for the company which recently let go of more than 11,000 employees or 13 per cent of its workforce. In October this year, Reuters reported that Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg’s expensive bet on the metaverse project drove up the company’s overall costs by a fifth in the third quarter.
This led to investors dumping Meta’s stocks, pushing it down 20 per cent and wiping off nearly $67 billion in market value for the company, which also posted its fourth straight decline in quarterly profit. According to Reuters, the company’s disappointing outlook comes at a time when it is dealing with slowing economic growth globally, privacy changes from Apple that affect its advertising business, and intense competition from TikTok.
Ajit Mohan, who had occupied the role that Devanathan will soon fill, left the company and joined its competitor Snap as the president of its Asia Pacific business. Other departures from the company include Abhijit Bose, who led WhatsApp in India and Raji Aggarwal, who served as the director of public policy for Meta in India.
