Micro-social blogging mogul Twitter announced the appointment of Manish Maheshwari as the new managing director of the company's India-region with effect later this month.
Starting on April 29, Manish responsibility includes expansion of Twitter India's presence in the market and strengthening its value proposition in the subcontinent.
Under Manish, several teams in India will work closely to drive conversations and audience engagement on the platform in addition to forging partnerships with brands, agencies and publishers, to connect with the most relevant and influential audiences on Twitter.
"India is one of our fastest growing audience markets for Twitter in the world and our purpose is to serve the public conversation in India. We are thrilled to have Manish join us at this important time to take our Indian business to the next level. He has a successful track record of building strong digital businesses and leading teams in India, extensive experience working at the intersection of media and technology sectors, and a deep understanding of Indian consumer trends over the past 20years. Under his leadership, we will continue to invest in India to empower all elements of Indian society to have a public voice to be heard through Twitter," Maya Hari, vice president, Asia Pacific, Twitter said in a statement.
Who is Manish Maheshwari?
As per his LinkedIn profile, Mahesh has completed Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com) with Honours in majors at Commerce, Economics, Accounting, Law at the prestigious Shri Ram College of Commerce (1994-97). Later, he went on to work at Procter & Gamble starting as assistant manager and went to become manager Asia region (September 2000-04).
Manish did his Master of Business Administration (MBA) with triple majors—entrepreneurship, strategy and finance—at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania (2004-06)
Soon after completing the MBA course, he joined McKinsey & Company as the managing consultant for two years. (2006-08).
Manish went to become Intuit's new market development work (global) head with a focus on serving consumers and small businesses in emerging markets of Asia on the mobile technology platform with products such as QuickBooks, TurboTax and Mint. He has the credit of winning the highest innovation award of the company twice.
He was later made as a general manager & managing director of the Intuit-funded, txtWeb, a mobile app platform for the people without a smartphone or data plan. It also enabled the crowdsourcing of local content and services from thousands of external developers through seamless API-based exchange. This apparently led to the massive adoption of txtWeb among the non-English audience in tier 3 towns and villages of India.
In 2015, Manish joined Flipkart (now owned by Walmart), as the head of merchant business & seller ecosystem, but a year later he became the new chief executive officer (CEO) of Network18 Digital and within two years of his service, the company achieved many milestones such as achieving 100 million unique digital visitors per month, content in 12 languages and well-diversified revenues encompassing advertising, subscription, branded content and syndications with key digital properties including Moneycontrol, Firstpost, News18, CNBC-TV18, CricketNext and In.com.
Now, Manish is taking over from Balaji Krish, who has been leading the Twitter India team in the interim for the past few months. Balaji Krish (BK) will be returning to the company's global headquarters in San Francisco to resume his role as global head of revenue strategy and operations at Twitter.
"The future of India is digital-first and full of possibilities with the world's largest youth population and soon, the world's largest workforce. I've been a Twitter user for more than 10 years now and I'm excited to lead Twitter India now to greater heights in the country. With premium Indian content on the rise in multiple regions across the country, I believe we are scratching the surface of what's possible with Twitter in India. With our amazing teams across India, I'm bullish about the overall impact that Twitter India can create in the country and the influence of India on our global platform," Manish Maheshwari, Managing Director, Twitter India said.
Like Facebook and its subsidiary WhatsApp, Twitter India has its tasks cut out due to the ongoing Lok Sabha elections. Indian government and Election Commission has asked all social media companies to control the spread of the misinformation, hate speeches and propaganda on their respective platforms.
A few months ago, Twitter India and global CEO, Jack Dorsey faced backlash over the latter posing for a picture with a placard of 'Smash Brahminical Patriarchy', which offended lots of users on Twitter.
Owing to the pressure, Twitter India issued a statement that the poster did not represent the views of the organisation and was, in fact, gifted to Dorsey by one of the Dalit activists.
It remains to be seen how Manish will turn things around the fortune of Twitter for good in India.
