Meet Sandhya Devanathan, Meta's new India head

Facebook parent Meta on Thursday appointed Sandhya Devanathan as the new head of its India business after several high-profile exits in its largest market in terms of users.

Devanathan will focus on bringing the organisation's business and revenue priorities together to serve its partners and clients, the company says in a statement.

She will transition to her new role on January 1, 2023 and will report to Dan Neary, vice president, Meta APAC and will be a part of the APAC leadership team.

This comes days after former Meta India head Ajit Mohan quit the social media giant to join Snap Inc. WhatsApp India head Abhijit Bose and Meta India's public policy director Rajiv Aggarwal also resigned from their respective positions on Tuesday.

Meta's new India head will move back to India to lead the organisation and strategy. As part of her role, she will spearhead the company's India charter and strengthen the strategic relationships with the country's leading brands, creators, advertisers, and partners to drive Meta's revenue growth in key channels in India.

Devanathan, who has 22 years of experience in banking, payments and technology, joined Meta in 2016 and helped build the Singapore and Vietnam businesses and teams, as well as Meta's e-commerce initiatives in Southeast Asia. She then moved to lead gaming in APAC in 2020.

"Sandhya has a proven track record of scaling businesses, building exceptional and inclusive teams, driving product innovation and building strong partnerships. We are thrilled to have her lead Meta's continued growth in India," says Marne Levine, chief business officer at Meta.

Mark Zuckerberg-led Meta sacked 11,000 employees, or 13% of its workforce earlier this month. "I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here," Zuckerberg said while announcing the layoffs. "Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I'd expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that," he said.

"We are also taking a number of additional steps to become a leaner and more efficient company by cutting discretionary spending and extending our hiring freeze through Q1," said the Meta CEO.

Meta clocked a net profit of $4.4 billion for the July-September quarter, down 52% from $9.19 billion in the same period a year ago. Revenue of the tech giant declined 4% year-on-year to $27.7 billion during the quarter as competition from short-video app TikTok dragged down its advertising sales.

Meta, which had announced plans to spend $10 billion a year on the metaverse, forecasts that operating losses associated with the Reality Labs unit responsible for its metaverse investments would grow significantly year-over-year in 2023.