Amid rather tumultuous times that Whatsapp is in right now in its second biggest market, the company has now got its first India head. To comply with Indian government’s demands, the Facebook-owned instant messaging platform has announced appointment of Abhijit Bose as the head of WhatsApp India.
Abhijit Bose joins WhatsApp from Ezetap where he served as the company’s co-founder and CEO. He is a graduate of Harvard Business School and Cornell University and will join WhatsApp in early 2019. At WhatsApp, he will be responsible for building the company’s first full country team outside of California.
In a statement, the company said that Bose and his new team will be based in Gurugram. The team will focus on helping businesses connect with customers. Earlier this year, WhatsApp released the WhatsApp Business app for small business owners and the WhatsApp Business API to serve larger businesses that engage with customers at scale.
In a statement, Matt Idema, the chief operating officer at WhatsApp, said:
WhatsApp is deeply committed to India and we are excited to keep building products that help people connect and support India’s fast-growing digital economy. As a successful entrepreneur himself, Abhijit (Bose) knows what it takes to build meaningful partnerships that can serve businesses across India.
The development comes less than a month after a meeting between information technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Chris Daniels, vice-president of WhatsApp. In the meeting, Daniels had told Prasad in the meeting that WhatsApp has incorporated a local unit in India whose operations would begin soon.
Earlier this year, in August, WhatsApp had appointed a grievance officer for India, Komal Lahiri, who is based in the US. However, Ravi Shankar Prasad had suggested that the grievance officer should be located in India.
