Bose was
Appointed the first Country Head for WhatsApp in a country in 2018. He was hired to grow Whatsapp’s payments business and expand the messaging app’s reach in India. Bose previously co-founded payments company Ezetap before joining WhatApp as head of India. Earlier this year, Razorpay acquired Ezetap in a cash and stock deal.

Meta India confirmed the development and said the development was “entirely unrelated to recent news cycles”. Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, recently announced that the company plans to lay off 11,000 employees, which would cut 13% of Meta’s workforce.

Shivnath Thukral, director of public policy at WhatsApp, has now been appointed by Meta to lead the company’s public policy initiatives across all three platforms – WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, the company said.

While Thukral has been given the additional responsibility, it’s currently unclear who will replace Bose. “I would like to thank Abhijit Bose for his tremendous contributions as our first leader of WhatsApp in India. His entrepreneurial drive has helped our team deliver new services that have benefited millions of people and businesses. There is so much more WhatsApp can do for India and us. “We look forward to continuing to drive India’s digital transformation,” said Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp.

earlier this month,
Ajit Mohan, Vice President of Meta India, had left the company to join rival social media platform Snap as a business leader in the Asia Pacific region.

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While Bose will leave the company later this week after his notice period expires, Aggarwal will complete his notice period over the next few days. Both Bose and Aggarwal handed in their resignations before Mohan left the company last week, sources said.

Bose’s exit comes at a time when WhatsApp India has been struggling to make headway in its payments business here on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).