Meta Vice President Sandhya Devanathan to join OpenAI — TechCrunch
Meta Vice President for India and Southeast Asia Sandhya Devanathan is leaving the company and will join OpenAI. She will work from Singapore and will be responsible for developing the consumer segment, deploying products among corporate clients, partnerships, engagement with regulators, and operations in Southeast Asia and Australia, TechCrunch reports.
Responsibilities at OpenAI
Devanathan will report to OpenAI's managing director for the Asia-Pacific region, Kiran Mani. She worked at Meta for more than ten years and, before being appointed vice president for India and Southeast Asia in June last year, among other roles led the company's gaming business in the Asia-Pacific region.
Her move comes several days after Prabjeet Singh joined OpenAI as head of India. Before that, he worked at Uber for more than ten years, where he led the company's business in India and South Asia.
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Changes at Meta and pressure in India
According to a person familiar with the matter, after Devanathan's departure, Meta's managing director in India, Arun Srinivas, will report directly to the company's Asia-Pacific vice president, Benjamin Joe. Over the past two years, OpenAI has opened offices in Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney, and Delhi.
Meta has faced increased scrutiny from Indian authorities in recent weeks over online safety and content moderation issues. Earlier this month, the company apologized after Instagram mistakenly restricted a post by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that was published in July. The Indian government summoned Meta representatives, including global affairs director Joel Kaplan, over the incident.
Last month, the Indian government also demanded an explanation from Meta following a BBC report about Instagram advertisements that, according to the media outlet, offered access to child sexual abuse material. Meta said it had removed the advertisements and accounts that violated its rules and rejected suggestions that it knowingly targeted such ads at users based on inappropriate interests. The company also reported removing 160,000 accounts in India over six months based on signals of activity linked to child exploitation.
