Meta India head Ajit Mohan resigns

MUMBAI: Ajit Mohan, the head of Meta Platforms' India division, resigned today in order to pursue another opportunity, informed Meta on Thursday.

According to the reports by TechCrunch, Mohan left the firm to join rival Snap. And he will lead the APAC division at Snap as its President.

As per the reports of TechCrunch, as the VP and MD of the India business, Mohan joined Meta, which was then known as Facebook, in January 2019.

During his tenure at the company, Facebook's family of applications, including Instagram and WhatsApp, attracted more than 200 million users in India, made a number of bold investments there, including writing a $5.7 billion cheque to Indian telecom operator Jio Platforms, and expanded WhatsApp's business features.

During his term, Meta underwent considerable changes in India, which it considers to be its largest user market. Ankhi Das, a prominent Facebook executive in India, resigned in 2020 after being accused of interfering with the company's implementation of its hate-speech policy in the country, as per the reports of TechCrunch.

"Ajit has decided to step down from his role at Meta to pursue another opportunity outside of the company. Over the last four years, he has played an important role in shaping and scaling our India operations so they can serve many millions of Indian businesses, partners and people. We remain deeply committed to India and have a strong leadership team in place to carry on all our work and partnerships. We are grateful for Ajit's leadership and contribution and wish him the very best for the future.'- according to Nicola Mendelsohn, Vice President, Global Business Group, Meta.

Snap has increased its efforts in India in recent years, with the goal of introducing a number of customised features. According to Data.ai and SensorTower data, the app doubled its user base in the country to 100 million users in the last three years.

Mohan, a McKinsey alum, gained recognition at Star, where he was pivotal in convincing the entertainment giant to develop a streaming service named Hotstar.

According to TechCrunch, Mohan, along with Uday Shankar, was pivotal in Hotstar's content strategy, which focused on local movies and series as well as sports streaming. Hotstar became a crown jewel in Disney's portfolio following the Fox acquisition thanks to the timely bet on internet streaming and cricket.