Social media giant Facebook has appointed Umang Bedi as its Managing Director for India. He will take over from Kirthiga Reddy, who will be returning to the U.S. to take on a new role at the company’s Menlo Park headquarters.
Mr. Bedi has close to two decades of leadership experience covering sales, marketing and partnerships with multinational companies.
Prior to joining Facebook, he was Managing Director (South Asia) at Adobe. 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 U.S.,” Dan Neary, vice president, Asia Pacific, Facebook said in a statement.
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.”
“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,” Mr. Bedi said.
An engineering graduate from the University of Pune, Mr. Bedi is also an alumnus of Harvard Business School.
Ms Reddy is set to join the Global Accounts team 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,” Ms. Reddy said.
Mr. Bedi will officially start at Facebook in July, while Ms. Reddy will take up her new role in August.
