Meta India Head Ajit Mohan Resigns, Set To Join Snap Inc

In what appears to be the second high profile exit from Meta India in a span of two months, the social media giant’s India head Ajit Mohan has quit the company. 

“Ajit has decided to step down from his role at Meta to pursue another opportunity outside of the company,” said Meta’s global business group vice president Nicola Mendelsohn.

A Meta spokesperson told Reuters that Meta India’s director and head of partnerships Manish Chopra will take over as the interim head. 

“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,” added Mendelsohn .

According to TechCrunch, Mohan will join Meta’s rival Snap, where he will work as the President of the APAC business. 

Prior to joining Meta as the MD for the India market in January 2019, Mohan served as the CEO of video streaming service Hotstar for four years.

This is the second high profile exit from Meta in the country in two months. In September, Manesh Mahatme quit as the chief of WhatsApp Pay in India 

Upheaval At Meta

Mohan’s resignation comes amidst a major churn at the social media platform in the country. While some of its subsidiaries have been locked in a legal tussle with the government, others have been accused of abusing their dominance. 

Mohan’s resignation comes days after WhatsApp was hit with a major outage that knocked down services for close to hours. The disruption prompted the Indian government to seek a report from the company. 

Piling on this has been a recent ruling by the Supreme Court that, essentially, gave its nod to Competition Commission of India (CCI) to continue its probe into the 2021 privacy policy update of the instant messaging platform. 

Earlier last year, Meta also came close to losing its immunity after the company failed to comply with the new IT Rules, 2021. Besides, Instagram is also party to a case where a petitioner has alleged unilateral termination of an account. 

Amidst all this, the platform has repeatedly been pulled up by authorities for lax implementation of various legal notices and failure to curb fake news.

Despite the policy challenges, Mohan’s tenure saw Facebook add more than 40 Mn users, while its sister platforms such as Instagram also grew in popularity among teenagers. It is this experience that Mohan is expected to take to Snap, a platform which is largely focused on young-teens and early adults.