Kirthiga Reddy’s decision to step down as managing director of Facebook India could not have come at a worse time. The Menlo Park-headquartered social networking giant has just pulled back one of its pet projects, Free Basics, following regulatory hurdles and a huge public outcry.
Facebook has gone into damage control mode, dissociating Reddy from the Free Basics controversy, but questions remain on the timing of her move. Experts also say one of the reasons for her leaving could be that Facebook has not been able to monetise its platform well despite having a huge user base in the country.
Reddy, 44, a management graduate from Stanford, had joined Facebook India as its first employee in July 2010 at its first office in Hyderabad.
She was heading the online operations of the company as a director before being made managing director of the social networking company’s India business three years ago. As a part of that role, she was responsible for driving advertising revenue, located out of Mumbai.
During her tenure with the company over the past five-and-a-half years, Facebook’s users in the country have grown from 8 million to 138 million, making India its second largest market after the US.
“For the last few years, Facebook has been the Internet in villages. It, therefore, was one of the strongest forces and the biggest frontier of how the Internet spread autonomously in less connected areas,” said Parminder Jeet Singh, executive director, IT for Change.
However, India provides a minuscule part of Facebook’s $17 billion revenue. According to different reports, Facebook India’s revenue stood at Rs 124 crore (Rs 1.28 billion) in 2015, up from Rs 98 crore (Rs 980 million) in 2013, despite having clients like Airtel, ICICI, Coca Cola and Cadbury.
Rival Google has been more successful in monetisation. In the year ended March 31, 2015, Google’s India unit posted revenues of Rs 4,108 crore (Rs 41.08 billion), a growth of 35 per cent over the previous year.
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