Ajit Mohan, the head of Meta in India, has left the firm and has agreed to join rival Snap, according to sources familiar with the matter. At Snap, Mohan will serve as the president of the company’s APAC business, two sources said.
The company also conceptualized and used India as the test market to build a range of services, including Reels. Facebook grew its revenue in India by over 70% to $2.1 billion in the financial year that ended in March.
A McKinsey alum, Mohan rose to the stardom at Star, where he played an instrumental role in getting the entertainment conglomerate to launch a streaming service, called Hotstar.
Along with Uday Shankar, Mohan also played a key part in the content strategy of Hotstar, banking on local movies and shows and sports streaming. The timely bet on online streaming and cricket cemented Hotstar’s place as a crown jewel in Disney’s portfolio after the Fox acquisition.
“Ajit has decided to step down from his role at Meta to pursue another opportunity outside of the company,” Nicola Mendelsohn, Vice President of Global Business Group at Meta, said in a statement.
“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.”
Snap has ramped up efforts in India and several other Asian markets in recent years and made a push to introduce a series of localized features. The app quadrupled its user base to 100 million users in India in the past three years, according to data from Data.ai and SensorTower.
Meta India head Ajit Mohan departs to join Snap by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch
