Facebook has appointed Umang Bedi, former Adobe executive for South Asia region, as new managing director for the company’s Indian operations. Bedi will start with his role officially in July 2016 and will be responsible for building strategic relationships with top clients and regional agencies.
He will take over from Kirthiga Reddy who was earlier heading Facebook India and is now returning to United States to take on a new role at the company’s headquarters at Menlo Park. She will now be joining Global Accounts team which manages Facebook’s relationships with the world’s largest global advertisers.
“After six years in India building our operations and business, it’s hard to leave a team I now call family. The good news is that we will continue to work together. As I look ahead, I am excited about how well positioned our business is, to grow from strength to strength with Umang’s leadership, and with my next opportunity to shape and drive our emerging markets strategy across some of the world’s biggest brands,” said Reddy.
Umang is an engineering graduate from University of Pune, an alumnus of Harvard Business School, and was a recipient of the ‘40 Under Forty: India’s Hottest Business Leaders Award 2014’. He has close to two decades of leadership experience covering sales, marketing and partnerships with multinational companies.
“For me it’s a promising opportunity to participate in India’s digital growth, and I can’t think of a better place to be at,” said Umang.
Facebook is currently targeting 150 Mn active mobile. It works with more than 85% of the top 100 advertisers in India, as identified by Kantar, a market research agency that is also part of the WPP media group. All of those advertisers use video within their Facebook campaigns in India.
“India is known for its great talent pool and we are really pleased to have Umang Bedi, a proven business executive to lead our business in India. Kirthiga has played a huge and key role in building our India business from scratch, and I know she will continue to deliver the same impact in the US,” said Dan Neary, Vice President, Asia Pacific, Facebook.
Earlier there were speculations that Microsoft India’s Karan Bajwa, MD, sales and marketing operations, will be taking this position. He had also recently resigned from the company.
