Arun Srinivas: Meta India's new managing director

An IIM-Calcutta alumni, Srinivas has 30-plus years of experience in sales and marketing departments and has worked in several high-profile companies including Reebok, Unilever and OLA.

After promoting incumbent India region head Sandhya Devanathan to an expanded role as vice president of the company's South Asia Pacific regions, Meta has appointed Arun Srinivas as the managing director and head of India operations.

An IIM-Calcutta alumni, Srinivas has 30-plus years of experience in sales and marketing departments and has worked in several high-profile companies. He began his professional life as a product manager at Reebok and in five years, he moved higher up the ranks to marketing manager at the shoe company in 2000.

He later moved to Hindustan Unilever as the company's branch manager North in 2001.

Srinivas worked at Unilever for more than 15 years becoming 'Category Vice President - Foods South Asia' in 2014 . He then moved to WestBridge Capital Partners as an operating advisor in 2017 and two and a half years later, he moved to Ola Mobility as chief operating officer and chief marketing officer (global) in July 2019 and worked there for two and a half years.

He joined Meta in 2020 as director and head of the global business group. After two years, he moved up to become the director of Ads business. He has been pivotal in coordinating with the country's top advertisers and agency partners to bring in revenues from emerging areas such as AI (Artificial Intelligence), Reels, and Messaging.

Recently, Meta launched video editing in the Meta AI app. Currently, it supports short 10-second content. It has plans to introduce paid subscription plans, which would allow users to edit longer videos and access more AI tools.

“As India continues to be at the forefront of economic growth and innovation, we are excited to have Arun at the helm of our efforts in this critical market. Meta in India is leading the way in AI adoption, WhatsApp, and Reels, and Arun’s impressive track record of building high-performing teams, driving product innovation, and fostering strong partnerships makes him the ideal leader to drive Meta’s continued investment in the country. He will continue to work closely with me as we scale the business in India.” said Sandhya Devanathan, Vice President (India and South East Asia), Meta

What will be Arun Srinivas' immediate assignment?

Srinivas is slated to take charge as manager director and India head, at Meta next month on July 1, 2025.

His immediate assignment will be to deal with the Competition Commission of India (CCI), which penalised Meta over anti-competitive practices related to WhatsApp's 2021 privacy policy update.

In its order dated November 18, 2024, CCI fined Rs 213.14 crore and a five-year ban on WhatsApp from making any changes to its terms of user services and user privacy policy.

In 2021, it said some part of the user data would be stored or tracked by the parent company Meta (formerly Facebook) and the subsidiaries to offer personalised service.

It specified that only the chat conversation between enterprise/business owners and customers on WhatsApp can be used by Meta and its entities. There were a lot more transparency issues and the company didn't address them to the public and later got panned by CCI.

Meta has appealed against the CCI's decision to the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT). The case is still ongoing.

Get the latest news on new launches, gadget reviews, apps, cybersecurity, and more on personal technology only on DH Tech