Meta India's head of partnerships Manish Chopra steps down

Manish Chopra was responsible for driving growth and engagement across Meta's family of apps that includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Manish Chopra, who was leading Facebook parent Meta's partnerships efforts in India, is stepping down after a four-and-a-half-year stint at the company.

This marks the fourth major departure at Meta India in the past year, following the exit of former India head Ajit Mohan and public policy head Rajiv Aggarwal in November 2022.

WhatsApp India head Abhijit Bose also left the company at the same time. Mohan and Aggarwal subsequently joined Snap Inc and Samsung respectively while Bose had earlier stated plans to work on a new startup.

After Mohan's departure, Chopra was serving as the company's interim leader for a brief period of two months until Sandhya Devanathan took over as Meta's India head from January 1, 2023.

In a LinkedIn post, Chopra said that he will "help with the transition over the next few weeks".

"Manish has decided to step down from his role in Meta to pursue a new phase in his professional journey. He was a part of the India leadership team for more than 4 years and played a key role in scaling our business and deepening our relationships with creators and businesses" Sandhya Devanathan, VP, Meta India said in a statement.

"In his role, Manish has made enormous contributions in enabling our priorities in India. We are grateful for his service and wish him the very best for the future" Devanathan added.

Chopra joined Meta India (than Facebook India) in 2019 as its director and head of partnerships. He was responsible for driving growth and engagement across Meta's family of apps which includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

With a combined user base of over a billion monthly users, India is the largest market for these apps.

Chopra was also leading the company's partnerships efforts in areas such as media, content, creator initiatives, payments, and its business communication platform Workspace.

"I am super proud of the work the team and I have done to become an ally for creators and businesses around the country" he said on LinkedIn "I am now looking forward to a new phase in my professional life. I will share more in due course"

Before joining Meta, Chopra was the co-founder and CEO of app-only deals marketplace Little that was later acquired by Paytm in 2017.

Chopra was also the co-founder of online apparel brand Zovi. He's also had a stint of nearly nine year at Microsoft across multiple roles and worked at Oracle for nearly two years.

Chopra's departure also comes against the backdrop of Meta laying off 21,000 people worldwide as part of its cost-cutting measures.

The first round of 11,000 job cuts happened in November 2022 while the second round of 10,000 layoffs was announced in March 2023 and is set to complete in May 2023.

Over the past few months, Meta has also taken several measures to aggressively cut costs and become a more nimble organisation, as the company embarks on what chief executive Mark Zuckerberg dubbed as a "year of efficiency".

These steps came amid a slow advertising demand due to a tough macroeconomic climate, the significant impact of Apple's iOS privacy restrictions on the social networking giant's advertising business and increased competition from players such as TikTok.

Last month, the company however reported that its advertising sales have returned to growth after three straight quarters of revenue decline on a yearly basis.

Meta posted a 3 percent year-on-year (YoY) increase in its revenue to $28.6 billion in Q1 2023, while profits fell 24 percent to $5.7 billion. The company doesn't disclose country-wise revenue break-up in its quarterly results.

For the financial year FY22, Meta India posted total income of Rs 2,324 crore for the financial year, registering a 56.5 percent jump from Rs 1,485.1 crore in the previous financial year. The gross advertising revenue saw a 74 percent on-year surge to Rs 16,189 crore during the period.

Net profit more than doubled to Rs 297 crore for the financial year a 132 percent increase from Rs 128.2 crore a year back.

Note: The story has been updated with Meta's response