WhatsApp India head Abhijit Bose and Meta Platforms Inc's public policy director in India Rajiv Aggarwal have resigned, Meta announced on Tuesday. This comes days after Meta India head Ajit Mohan quit the company after four years in the job to join rival Snap Inc.
Meta has now appointed Shivnath Thukral, the director of public policy at WhatsApp, to head the public policy initiatives of the company across all three platforms -- WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram.
"I want to thank Abhijit Bose for his tremendous contributions as our first Head of WhatsApp in India. His entrepreneurial drive helped our team deliver new services that have benefited millions of people and businesses. There is so much more WhatsApp can do for India and we're excited to continue helping advance India's digital transformation," said Will Cathcart, the head of WhatsApp, after the announcement.
Why did Bose quit?
Bose will leave the company towards the end of this week and he has revealed what he plans to do following this in a LinkedIn post.
"It's been 4 years from since I joined as WhatsApp's first Country Head in India, and I'm so proud of what we have built. I'm also really excited about my next gig. I believe that the next 5 years will be transformational for India -- with many of our current pre-IPO companies very quickly becoming the global leaders in their respective sectors. After a small break, I plan to rejoin the entrepreneurial world; you'll see announcements on that shortly!," wrote Bose.
This comes in the backdrop of mass layoffs at Meta, under which the company plans to cut 11,000 jobs or 13% of its workforce. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mark Zuckerberg had in September informed staff that Meta planned to reduce spending and reorganise teams.
Bose referred to it in his post and wrote: "It has been a tough week for all of our team at WhatsApp as we had to say Goodbyes to many amazing teammates last week."
However, he also stated that his exit from the company is not sudden and had been planned for a while. "It has been planned for a while, but given the events last week, we wanted to hold this back so we could focus on supporting those impacted last week."
The head of WhatsApp's India payment business, Manesh Mahatme, had also quit the company a few months back.
