Meet woman, the new Meta India head, who never went to IIT, IIM, she is from...

Sandhya Devanathan is a well-known business leader and currently serves as the Vice President and Managing Director of Meta India. She has played a key role in expanding Meta’s business in India. Sandhya joined Meta in 2016 as a Group Director in Singapore, overseeing e-commerce, travel, and financial services for the Southeast Asian market. In August, she took on a bigger role as the Managing Director for Meta’s Singapore business and the Business Head for Vietnam.

Sandhya Devanathan’s Education and Career Journey
Sandhya completed her Bachelor of Technology in Chemical Engineering from Andhra University (1994–1998). She then pursued an MBA from Delhi University (1998–2000). Later, in 2014, she attended the University of Oxford for a leadership course, further strengthening her management skills.

Before joining Meta, Sandhya gained 22 years of experience in banking, payments, and technology. She worked with Citigroup from 2000 to 2009 in various roles and later joined Standard Chartered, where she worked from 2009 to 2015. In 2020, after years of handling Meta’s business in Singapore and Vietnam, she took charge of the gaming division for the Asia-Pacific region.

Meta’s Job Cuts and Focus on AI
Despite Meta’s success, the company is currently making job cuts, calling them "performance terminations." This means that Meta is letting go of the lowest-performing 5% of employees. Unlike previous layoffs, this time Meta will keep its offices open on the day of the cuts and will not make a company-wide announcement.

These layoffs will happen globally but will not affect employees in Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands due to local labor laws. The affected employees will be notified between February 11 and February 18 in several countries across Europe, Asia, and Africa.

However, Meta is also focusing on hiring machine learning engineers and other important roles. According to a memo from Peng Fan, VP of Engineering for Monetization, the hiring process for these positions will be sped up from February 11 to March 13. This shows Meta’s strong focus on artificial intelligence (AI) development for 2025.

While the job cuts are concerning, Meta’s investment in AI suggests that the company is preparing for future growth in the tech industry.