Three Executives Leave Meta India

The parent company of Facebook and WhatsApp, Meta Platforms, Inc., lost three executives in the past month in India, the company's largest market by users, amid a global restructuring and increased government regulation.

The company said on Tuesday that Abhijit Bose, Meta India’s head of WhatsApp, and Rajiv Aggarwal, Meta India’s public policy director, resigned. Earlier this month, Meta’s head in India, Ajit Mohan, left the company and was replaced on an interim basis by Manish Chopra.

The resignations aren't tied to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement last week that it would cut 11,000 workers, Meta told the Wall Street Journal.

The company declined to comment on the impact that its new structural changes may have had on the exits. Meta India’s head, who had reported directly to Zuckerberg, will now report to Meta’s top Asia-Pacific executive in Singapore.

The company has also faced heightened regulatory challenges as Prime Minister Narendra Modi increases compliance burdens, which may have contributed to the executives' choices to leave.

Mohan, who joined the company in 2019, said on LinkedIn that he has accepted a new position as the head of Asia Pacific for Snap Inc. 

Aggarwal joined the company in late 2021, while Bose joined in 2018. Neither has said where they are going next.

Meta in India

Meta's market in India has grown rapidly in recent years as hundreds of millions of people get access to the internet for the first time. Meta has more than 300 million users on Facebook and more than 400 million on WhatsApp.

It's also faced multiple challenges in India, where human rights groups and the authorities have questioned its work to limit hate speech on Facebook.

India established new rules to govern social media companies last February that force these groups to resolve users’ complaints about violent or inappropriate material swiftly.

India will also be updating its two-decade-old internet business policy with the Digital India Act, a draft of which is expected to be completed by early 2023. It would create stronger laws around hate speech regulation and also address digital monopolies and gatekeeping rules about market dominance.