WhatsApp India Head Abhijit Bose and Meta India Public Policy Director Rajeev Agarwal have resigned from their posts. Shivnath Thakral, Director of WhatsApp Public Policy in India, has now been made Director of Public Policy for all Meta brands in India.
The development comes after Meta recently laid off around 11,000 people worldwide in its biggest layoff ever. Earlier this month, Meta India head Ajit Mohan resigned from his post.
Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp, said in a statement, “I want to thank Abhijit Bose, our first head of WhatsApp in India, for his tremendous contribution. His entrepreneurial drive helped our team innovate and deliver service.
Millions of people and businesses have benefited from this. There is much more WhatsApp can do for India and we are excited to help drive India's digital transformation." Now a person will be appointed soon in place of Bose.
Bose also announced his resignation on LinkedIn, saying he was looking forward to his next job. He said, 'After a short break, I plan to rejoin the entrepreneurial world. I had planned to step down some time ago, but given the events of the past week, I wanted to focus on supporting those who have been affected.
The company said Rajiv Agarwal, Public Policy Director, Meta India, has decided to step down for another opportunity. Over the past year, he has been instrumental in leading our policy-based initiatives in areas such as user safety, and privacy and scaling up programs such as GOAL to drive digital inclusion in the country.
Recently, Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, laid off 11,000 of its employees. For the first time in the company's 18-year history, such a large number of employees have been retrenched. The announcement to remove the employees was made by the company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He attributed this to the decline in revenue due to wrong decisions.
Mark said, 'Today I am going to tell about some of the most difficult decisions made in the history of Meta. We have decided to reduce our team size by approximately 13%. Due to this, more than 11 thousand talented employees will lose their jobs. We are taking steps to become a more efficient company by cutting expenses and extending the hiring freeze through Q1.
