Sources: Ajit Mohan, the head of Meta in India who joined the company in 2019, has left to become the president of Snap's APAC business
Ajit Mohan, the head of Meta in India, has left the firm and joined rival Snap, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Context & Ripple Effects
Ajit Mohan's departure is the loudest piece of an exodus from Meta's India leadership that unfolded over two weeks: sources had already reported the exits of WhatsApp India head Abhijit Bose and public policy head Rajiv Aggarwal, and Meta moved within days to appoint Sandhya Devanathan as the new India lead starting January 1. Losing the executive who ran the company in one of its biggest user markets since 2019 — and losing him to a direct rival — turns a staffing gap into a competitive story.
For Snap, the hire is a statement about APAC ambition: the company later doubled down on the same playbook by naming former Google Pay executive Pulkit Trivedi as its India head and granting greater autonomy to local leadership in a market where Snapchat counts more than 200M monthly active users.
First-order effects
- Snap gains a seasoned operator of Meta's India organization to run its entire APAC business, instantly deepening its regional bench against the incumbent.
- Meta must backfill its India leadership while simultaneously replacing Bose and Aggarwal, leaving its most important growth market temporarily run by newly promoted hands.
Second-order effects
- Snap's subsequent moves — hiring Trivedi for India and devolving authority to local leaders — read as the continuation of the localization strategy Mohan's hire signals, sharpening head-to-head competition with Meta for Indian users and ad budgets.
- Meta's churn raises the price of proven India-market executives, pushing rivals like Snap to recruit directly from Meta rather than develop their own regional talent.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, India and APAC leadership roles at US platforms become a rotating talent pool shared among competitors, with Meta's own restructuring — Dan Neary's exit followed by Benjamin Joe's promotion to VP of Asia Pacific — showing the region is managed through recurring reorganizations rather than stable tenures.
The trend: US social platforms are treating APAC leadership as a contested talent market, with India veterans cycling between Meta, Snap, and other rivals as each localizes decision-making.