Here's why Meta is facing big C-Suite exits in India

Mark Zuckerberg-led social media giant Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is going through a tumultuous period globally. It has laid off around 11,000 employees across geographies while also dealing with decreasing investor confidence amid falling revenues and increasing expenditure. In India, while business has been good, with the social media giant reporting $2 billion in gross advertising revenues for FY22 (a jump of 74 per cent year-on-year), it has been hit by some top-level exits.

First, Ajit Mohan, who was Vice President and Managing Director of Meta India, left the company in early November, after close to four years at the helm. A little over a week later, Abhijit Bose, who was Head of India, WhatsApp, also stepped down after a stint of nearly four years. Along with Bose, Rajiv Aggarwal, who was Meta India’s Director of Public Policy, also quit.

These top-level exits were unexpected, especially in light of the company’s performance in India, say those tracking the company. “Meta is India’s biggest media company. Globally, it is struggling at the moment but in India, the company has a strong base which is likely to remain the same,” says Barnik Chitran Maitra, Managing Partner of consultancy firm Arthur D. Little, India.

Many of Meta’s recent bets in India have paid off. Some of them are short-format videos, the creator economy and helping small businesses sell on its popular platforms. All of this was achieved during Mohan’s tenure, when Meta also navigated stricter calls from the Indian authorities to regulate content on its platforms including hiring local nodal officers, and worked to secure a peer-to-peer payments licence for its WhatsApp messaging platform. “Ajit 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,” Nicola Mendelsohn, Vice President of Global Business Group at Meta, had said in a statement. Mohan has joined Snap, another social media platform, as President of the APAC region.

Bose, who was at the helm when WhatsApp Pay, the messaging platform’s UPI-based payments service, was rolled out, has said he plans to turn entrepreneur again after a short break. Bose, who set up WhatsApp’s first full-country team outside of California, was brought in from payments firm Ezetap, where he was Co-founder and CEO. Under his stewardship, WhatsApp forayed into conversational commerce, tying up with JioMart earlier this year. Incidentally, Ezetap was acquired by fintech unicorn Razorpay in August 2022.

However, WhatsApp Pay hasn’t been able to make a dent in the current payments ecosystem of the country that is dominated by the likes of Google Pay and PhonePe. In fact, Ashneer Grover, Co-founder and former CEO of BharatPe, another fintech company, criticised WhatsApp Pay on Twitter following Bose’s exit. “WhatsApp Pay has to be the biggest failure in India as a tech product,” he tweeted, adding that since everyone had WhatsApp on their phone, sending money on the messaging platform using UPI should have been as easy as sharing a picture.

Meanwhile Aggarwal, a former civil servant who had served in a public policy role at Uber India prior to joining Meta, quit after a little over a year. He is joining Samsung in a similar role, per industry sources.

While Meta has announced that Sandhya Devanathan—currently VP of its gaming business in the APAC region—will take over as India head in January 2023, it is yet to appoint a replacement for Bose. Meanwhile, Aggarwal has been replaced by Shivnath Thukral, a former business journalist and public policy head at WhatsApp India.

This assumes significance as the social media giant is under increased regulatory scrutiny in India now. The proposed amendments to the IT Act, 2000—currently in draft form and likely to be tabled in Parliament sometime next year—is expected to crack down on the spread of fake news and hold social media companies accountable. The Supreme Court, too, has dismissed pleas by WhatsApp and Meta challenging a Competition Commission of India (CCI) probe into the messaging platform’s 2021 privacy policy. The CCI believes that WhatsApp’s new privacy policy is not about privacy but focussed more on the company’s access to user data and its ability to share it with third parties including its parent company to help monetise and generate revenue through it.

Meanwhile, Meta has laid off employees and undertaken various cost-cutting measures following its heavy investments into the metaverse project that looks likely to continue for the time being. The company also received an open letter in October from Brad Gerstner, Chairman and CEO, Altimeter Capital, one of its largest shareholders, to reduce headcount and expenses on the metaverse to get its “mojo back”. This was shortly before the company reported a 19 per cent year-on-year rise in operating costs to $22.1 billion in the July-September quarter, led by its investments into the metaverse.

Amidst all this, the incoming leadership at Meta’s India operations will have their hands full in the next few months.

@r_dhanrajani