Facebook India on Tuesday named Umang Bedi as its managing director. He will take over from Kirthiga Reddy, who will be returning to the US to take on a new role at the company’s Menlo Park headquarters.
Bedi has close to two decades of leadership experience covering sales, marketing and partnerships with multinational companies.
Prior to joining Facebook, he was the managing director, South Asia, at Adobe Inc. He was responsible for making India one of Adobe’s leading markets.
“India is known for its great talent pool and we are really pleased to have Umang Bedi, a proven business executive, to lead our business in India. I also want to wish Kirthiga the very best in her new global role. Kirthiga has played a huge and key role in building our India business from scratch, and I know she will continue to deliver the same impact in the US,” said Dan Neary, vice-president, Asia Pacific, Facebook, in an email sent by the company.
He added, “Facebook is where people and businesses connect on mobile and with close to 150 million monthly active people in India, we see significant opportunities to help Indian business—large and small—deliver against their business objectives in the mobile world.”
Facebook works with more than 85% of the top 100 advertisers in India identified by market research company Kantar. All of them use video within their Facebook campaigns in India.
“I am thrilled to join Facebook and am looking forward to working with the talented teams in India to help brands and agencies grow their business on our platform. For me, it’s a promising opportunity to participate in India’s digital growth, and I can’t think of a better place to be at,” said Bedi.
An engineering graduate from the University of Pune, Bedi is also an alumnus of Harvard Business School and the recipient of the prestigious ‘40 Under Forty: India’s Hottest Business Leaders Award 2014’ given by The Economic Times and Chicago-based global executive search and leadership consulting firm Spencer Stuart in 2014.
Reddy is set to join the Global Accounts team at Menlo Park, California, where she will manage a set of global brands and also lead the emerging markets efforts globally for the Global Accounts team, which manages Facebook’s relationships with the world’s largest global advertisers.
“After six years in India building our operations and business, it’s hard to leave a team I now call family. The good news is that we will continue to work together. As I look ahead, I am excited about how well positioned our business is, to grow from strength to strength with Umang’s leadership, and with my next opportunity to shape and drive our emerging markets strategy across some of the world’s biggest brands,” Reddy said.
Bedi will officially start at Facebook in July while Reddy will take up her new role in August.
This also puts an end to the speculation triggered by a report published in The Economic Times on Tuesday that said Microsoft India’s Karan Bajwa was to join Facebook India. A Facebook spokesperson had told Mint earlier that “the ET story is off by many miles. We will let you know when a successor is appointed”.
