Social media giant Meta India head Ajit Mohan resigned from the company on Thursday and will be joining rival Snap from February.
Both Meta and Snap confirmed the development.
"Ajit has decided to step down from his role at Meta to pursue another opportunity outside of the company.
"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," Meta's Global Business Group Vice President Nicola Mendelsohn said in a statement.
Sources said Mohan has resigned with immediate effect
Mohan had joined Meta, which was earlier known as Facebook, in January 2019 from Hotstar.
Responding to an email query, Snap, which owns social media platform Snapchat, said Mohan will be joining the company in February as president for Asia Pacific Region.
"I'm happy to share that Ajit Mohan will join Snap as our new President, APAC, joining us in February. Ajit comes from Meta where he most recently served as VP & Managing Director of India, and previously held executive roles across the region, including as founding CEO of Disney's Hotstar," Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said.
Snap has 100 million active users in India
"As President of APAC Ajit will lead our India, Australia & New Zealand, China, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Korea businesses. Ajit will provide in-market leadership, lead cross-functional efforts across the region, oversee all local operations, and lead our go-to-market strategy. He's a talented and well respected executive with a breadth of experience that will serve our community and partners in wonderful ways!" Spiegel added.
Mohan will be a member of Snap's executive team and report to its chief operating officer Jerry Hunter. The regional sales teams, including that of India and China, will report to Mohan.
Resignation comes amid GoI's new IT rules
Mohan's resignation comes within a week of the government notifying stringent norms under the IT Act for social media platforms.
The government last week notified rules under which it will set up appellate panels to redress grievances that users may have against decisions of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook on hosting contentious content.
Minister of Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar had said the move to form three-member Grievance Appellate Committees (GACs) was necessitated as the government has information that there were lakhs of messages from citizens where grievances were not responded to by social media firms despite complaints.
There will be one government member, and two independent members in these committees.
During Mohan's tenure, Facebook came under sharp criticism for allegedly favouring ruling party leaders on the platform. The controversy followed resignation of Facebook's then policy head Ankhi Das in October 2020.
