India's WhatsApps country head, Abhijit Bose, and Meta India public policy chief, Rajiv Aggarwal, have left the social networking firm as the latest high-profile exits, shortly after Meta India head Ajit Mohan’s resignation to join Snapchat.
Meta also announced the appointment of Shivnath Thukral as its director of public policy for all Meta brands — Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp in India. The company is yet to find a replacement for Bose to lead its WhatsApp team here.
Meta spokesperson has confirmed to Reuters that the two departures are unrelated to 11,000 global layoffs announced last week by the company.
Announcing his resignation from Whatsapp on LinkedIn, Bose wrote: “After four amazing years at WhatsApp, I have taken the call to move on from Meta. This decision has not been an easy one for me...It has been planned for a while, but given the events last week, we wanted to hold this back so we could focus on supporting those impacted last week.”
Bose had hinted at his plans to join the entrepreneurial world shortly after a break.
Bose had been instrumental in delivering significant revenue and volume growth in Whatsapp, expanding its user base to over half a billion users in the country.
He has worked on several partnerships for rendering India's integrated Unified Payments Interface (UPI) payment services, and also evolving API-based business strategy with pilot projects to deliver users credit, insurance and pension and introduced grocery shopping by partnering with tech giant Reliance Jio.
WhatsApp head Will Cathcart said, “There is so much more WhatsApp can do for India and we’re excited to continue helping advance India’s digital transformation."
Similarly, Aggarwal has also played an important role in leading WhatsApp’s policy-led initiatives in areas such as user safety, and privacy, and scaling up programs like GOAL to drive digital inclusion in the country.
GOAL is a Meta initiative along with India’s Ministry of Tribal Affairs to digitally upskill one million youth by opening up opportunities for them to use digital technology.
Meta’s director of partnerships in India, Manish Chopra, said: “We remain committed to our users in India and will continue to contribute meaningfully to the regulatory process that will enable everyone to harness the full potential of India’s digital economy.”
Facebook and WhatsApp have been facing regulatory and privacy policy challenges in India with new regulatory laws coming on board.
