Meta's India Head Devanathan Exits To Lead OpenAI's Southeast Asia Push

Sandhya Devanathan, Meta's vice president for India, is leaving the company after a decade to join OpenAI as vice president for Southeast Asia and Australia, the ChatGPT maker announced.

The role is newly created. Devanathan will work out of Singapore and report to Kiran Mani, OpenAI's managing director for the Asia Pacific region, the company said. Her responsibilities will include consumer growth, enterprise adoption, partnerships, regulatory engagement and operations across the two regions.

A Decade At Meta

Devanathan joined Meta in 2016, when the company had roughly 300 employees in Singapore. Over the years, she helped set up its Singapore and Vietnam operations and worked on e-commerce initiatives across Southeast Asia. In 2020, she took charge of Meta's gaming business for the Asia Pacific, one of its largest verticals globally.

She was named India head in 2023, and her role was expanded to cover Southeast Asia as well in June last year. She was also part of the company's internal decision making on India related matters, according to a person familiar with the development. Meta has faced continued scrutiny in the country over online safety and content moderation practices.

Announcing her exit in a LinkedIn post on Friday, Devanathan reflected on how different the industry looked when she started. She said 2016 was a period when digital transformation was the buzzword everywhere, and her teams spent those years helping startups, companies and creators grow across the region while serving hundreds of millions of users.

Benjamin Joe, Meta's vice president for Asia Pacific, credited her "dedication, passion and drive" for leaving a lasting impact on the company.

With Devanathan's departure, Arun Srinivas, Meta's managing director and country head for India, will now report directly to Joe. Srinivas had previously reported to Devanathan.

Devanathan's move comes shortly after Prabhjeet Singh took over as OpenAI's India head. Singh spent more than ten years at Uber, where he ran the company's India and South Asia business.

OpenAI has been steadily building out its presence in the region, setting up offices in Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney and Delhi over the past two years.