Who is Sandhya Devanathan, the new Meta India head?

This is Sandhya Devanathan's second stint at Meta.

Sandhya Devanathan has been appointed as the head of Facebook parent Meta, the social media giant said on Thursday. She is currently the head of Meta’s gaming vertical for Asia-Pacific. She will take charge in January.

Her appointment comes two days after Meta India's director of public policy, Rajiv Aggarwal and WhatsApp India head Abhijit Bose left the company. Two weeks ago, Meta India's country head Ajit Mohan resigned. Earlier this month, Meta laid off 11,000 people worldwide, including India.

Sandhya Devanathan takes the top job at Meta India after spending over six years in the company. She joined Meta in 2016 and helped build its Singapore and Vietnam businesses and teams, as well as the e-commerce initiatives in Southeast Asia. In 2020, she moved to lead the gaming vertical for Asia-Pacific.

She serves on the boards of Pepper Financial Services Group and Singapore's National Library Board.

In her career spanning over two decades, Devanathan spent close to 10 years at Citi in various roles. Following this, she joined Standard Chartered Bank where she spent another six years . Her last role at Standard Chartered was of managing director for retail banking and payment products in Singapore.

After completing her engineering from Andhra University in 1998. Devanathan earned an MBA from Delhi University. She went to Oxford University’s Saïd Business School in 2014 for a course in leadership.