Meta’s head of public coverage in India, Shivnath Thukral, is leaving the social networking firm, almost three and a half years after becoming a member of, and simply months after his counterpart at Google stepped down.
Thukral spent over seven and a half years at Meta and took over as public coverage lead for the South Asian market — the corporate’s largest person base — in November 2022, after his predecessor Rajiv Aggarwal left.
“Having helped construct among the methods and processes, I do really feel it’s a good time to let the engine and the staff work on their very own. As my subsequent journey begins, I need to acknowledge the work of my staff, which is the very best in enterprise and one of many explanation why that is such a tough resolution for me,” Thukral said in a LinkedIn submit on Wednesday.
Thukral’s exit comes simply months after Meta received aid in India over WhatsApp’s 2021 data-sharing coverage, which had earlier resulted in a five-year ban by the nation’s antitrust regulator. The corporate had warned that the antitrust ruling could force the rollback of its options.
Nonetheless, Meta, which has the biggest user base for Fb and WhatsApp, and the most important marketplace for its Meta AI utilization in India, nonetheless faces regulatory challenges because the nation strikes towards enacting its anticipated data privacy rules that will require parental consent to serve children.
Meta additionally faces criticism from Indian telcos, as WhatsApp has over 500 million users within the nation, and a big phase of them makes use of the moment messaging service as a substitute of conventional telecom providers for speaking over textual content, voice, and video calls. Equally, WhatsApp is commonly criticized for not restricting spam on its platform in India, though the app did carry adjustments that had been touted to limit unsolicited enterprise communication.
“It isn’t a simple resolution to make, however I really feel very assured that our coverage engagement with stakeholders is at a reputable and constructive juncture, and we will solely construct additional on that. There may be at all times extra to do, and I do know the staff is effectively outfitted to navigate the waters effectively,” Thukral wrote.
Meta confirmed to TechCrunch that the corporate has not appointed Thukral’s alternative.
In February, Google’s coverage head, Sreenivasa Reddy, quit. Reddy had changed former Indian antitrust official Archana Gulati, who resigned in 2022 simply 5 months after becoming a member of.
Google has not but appointed a alternative for Reddy, and his exit occurred amid the search large’s antitrust circumstances within the nation, a few of that are yet to be settled.
“Shivnath Thukral is leaving Meta to pursue new alternatives,” stated Kevin Martin, Meta VP and head of worldwide coverage, in a ready assertion. “As a member of the India management staff, he performed a key position in navigating and shaping coverage and regulatory conversations and engagements that had been vital for the business and Meta in India over the past 7.5 years. We thank him for his management and contributions, and want him effectively in his future endeavors,” he added.