SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — On the heels of the news that Twitter are preparing to trim nine percent of its staff across the board with layoffs, the social media company is also losing the head of its business in India.
Rishi Jaitly, who heads up all matters in India and is a VP of its Asia Pacific/Middle East business, said today that he will leave the company at the end of November following four years of service.
Jaitly joined Twitter after a previous tenure at the Knight Foundation, however, he is best known in tech circles for a two-year stint with Google, where he ran public-private partnerships, public policy advocacy and government affairs in India and the South Asia region.
Today, after 4 years of user/business momentum in India & the region, I’m sharing my intention to move on to new opportunities, same mission
Jaitly is yet to reveal where he’s headed next, only adding that “a personal/civic calling” will see him relocate to Chicago. He added that he plans to “spend significant time in India/Asia.”
The popularity of such social media networks as Facebook, where India have more than 125 million daily active users, WhatsApp, who have another 75 million daily users, have shown that there is a market for the companies in India. However, Twitter has never come anywhere near reaching that sort of user base in the country. Despite India boasting the world’s second largest internet population — more than 400 million, behind only China — the microblogging service is thought to account for under 20 percent of the country’s social network users.
His exit comes at the exact same moment Twitter begins to downsize its operations in Asia.
Around 20 employees from its Bangalore office received their pink slips in September, while cost-cutting measures in October have seen a number of roles “transitioned” from Twitter’s Hong Kong office to its regional headquarters in Singapore. The Hong Kong office was opened 18 months ago to help Twitter reach advertisers in China that seek a global audience, but now Twitter’s China MD, Kathy Chen, will be its sole occupant. In another personnel shift in Asia Pacific, Twitter’s head of Australia, Karen Stocks, left her role at the company last month.
In addition to the scores of layoffs the company is preparing for, it also shut down operations of Vine, its short video service, last week.
