Sandhya Devanathan, Meta’s vice president for India and Southeast Asia, is departing the social media giant to join OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, TechCrunch reported.
Devanathan will be based in Singapore and will report to Kiran Mani, OpenAI’s Asia-Pacific managing director. OpenAI said she will oversee consumer growth, enterprise adoption and partnerships, regulatory engagement, and operations across Southeast Asia and Australia.
Devanathan leaves Meta after more than a decade at the company. She joined Meta in 2016 and held several leadership roles there, including leading its Asia Pacific gaming business, before being named vice president for India and Southeast Asia in June last year.
Her appointment at OpenAI follows days after Prabhjeet Singh joined the company as its India head; Singh spent more than a decade at Uber, where he led its India and South Asia business.
OpenAI’s regional expansion
Over the past two years OpenAI has expanded its presence across the Asia-Pacific region, opening offices in Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney and Delhi.
Organizational changes at Meta
Following Devanathan’s departure, Meta’s India managing director Arun Srinivas will report directly to Benjamin Joe, the company’s vice president for Asia-Pacific, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke to TechCrunch.
Regulatory pressure on Meta in India
Meta has faced rising scrutiny from Indian authorities in recent weeks over online safety and content moderation. Earlier this month the company apologized after Instagram mistakenly restricted a July post by Prime Minister Narendra Modi; the incident led Indian officials to summon Meta executives, including Joel Kaplan, the company’s chief global affairs officer.
New Delhi has also raised concerns about child sexual abuse material on Meta platforms. A BBC report found Instagram advertisements that allegedly offered access to such content, prompting the Indian government to seek an explanation from the company. Meta said in a blog post that it removed violating ads and accounts and denied suggestions that it knowingly targeted users with such adverts. The company also noted it had removed 160,000 accounts in India over six months on signals indicating child-exploitative activity.
Why this matters
Devanathan’s move signals OpenAI’s intent to deepen regional leadership and operations across Southeast Asia and Australia. For Meta, her departure triggers an internal reporting change in an important market amid growing regulatory scrutiny in India.
