Former Snapdeal CPO Anand Chandrasekaran Joins Facebook For Messenger App

Angel investor and entrepreneurial product leader, Anand Chandrasekaran has been roped in by Facebook to work for its Messenger app.

Confirming the development on his social media account, Chandrasekaran said, “They say the best journeys bring you home. We embarked on one 2.5 years ago, and it has been nothing short of incredible – I am super excited to share that building on the learning and experiences – I am joining Facebook to work on Facebook Messenger platform. Really looking forward to working with Ime, David, Stan, John and the team to listen and learn and help build on the momentum.”

In a global role, he will be working out of the Silicon Valley headquarters of the company. In this role, he will develop strategies and partnerships for the platform.

Prior to this, he worked as the Chief Product Officer at Snapdeal. In May 2016, he quit the company. The announcement was made by Rohit Bansal on Twitter. Anand had joined Snapdeal in June 2015. At Snapdeal, he played an instrumental role in integrating more services into Snapdeal’s app and mobile wallet.

As per his LinkedIn profile, previously, he was CPO at Bharti Airtel, driving Wynk Music, APIs, Airtel Money etc. and leading the e-commerce business. Before that, he was with Yahoo, where he held roles of Sr. Director for Search and Mobile. Prior to Yahoo, Anand was Director of Product at Openwave. Previously, he co-founded Aeroprise Inc. Under Anand’s leadership, Aeroprise became the most-deployed solution worldwide for mobile service management and raised $7 Mn funding before being acquired by BMC Software.

Anand holds a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and a Bachelor’s in Communications Engineering from PSG College of Technology (India).

He is an active angel investor with 19 investments across consumer internet, P2P and B2C marketplaces, fintech, SaaS, and hardware.  His investments include Bengaluru-based real estate portal NoBroker; Delhi-based smartphone gaming platform, Gamezop; Bengaluru-based online lingerie brand, Buttercups; RentOnGo, a Bengaluru-based online marketplace for renting bikes, electronics and appliances; and local merchant discovery and privileges platform, Crownit among others.

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