Meta India Chief Joins Rival Snap As Company, Once Accused Of Calling The Country 'Poor,' Eyes Growth In APAC

Meta Platforms Inc. META India’s head stepped down from his role on Thursday to pursue another opportunity at rival social media platform Snap Inc. SNAP. 

What Happened: Ajit Mohan will become Snap’s Asia Pacific business president after the social media giant created regional president roles earlier this year for the company to focus on the unique needs of key geographies. 

“We believe that Ajit’s leadership will enable us to accelerate our growth across APAC, and we could not be more thrilled to have Ajit joining the Snap team,” co-founder and CEO of Snap, Evan Spiegel, said, reported Bloomberg.

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Snap, in August, had revealed a new organizational structure — which included job cuts, halting of some projects and more attention on revenue-generating opportunities — as it faced severe competition from Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. The social media company said the cuts affected about 1,300 of Snap’s 6,400 employees. 

Although the data has shown that Snap nearly doubled its user base in India to 100 million last year, the company has struggled to set foot against its rivals in the country of 1.3 billion people.

Meta's Facebook has about 329 million users, while Instagram has about 230.25 million in India, as of January 2022, according to Statista. 

In 2017, Snapchat faced a massive backlash in India after Spiegel reportedly said he feels India is "too poor" to seriously consider expanding its user base. "I don't want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain," Spiegel said, Variety quoted the employee's revelation. 

However, later the company refuted reports and said "Obviously Snapchat is for everyone! It’s available worldwide to download for free."

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