GIF by Tech in Asia.
Twitter’s India head Rishi Jaitly has quit the microblogging site after a four-year stint. Not surprisingly, he tweeted about the move. “Today, after 4 years of user/business momentum in India and the region, I’m sharing my intention to move on to new opportunities, same mission,” Rishi said in his goodbye note on Twitter.
“My teams led deals immersing Twitter in national zeitgeists, scaled our user base/business, reimagined the product, and entered new markets,” he added.
“There will be a smooth transition as his [Rishi’s] last day is in late November after which he will move back to the US, but will remain engaged in India, as he pursues new opportunities to harness the power of technology and scale of mass media to empower voices, particularly in emerging markets,” an official statement from Twitter said.
“He [Rishi] was our first person on the ground to bring Twitter into the high-growth Indian market; has driven bold, strategic partnerships to enter and grow new markets for Twitter; and has successfully built up our media Partnerships teams across the Asia Pacific and Middle East,” it said.
Princeton grad Rishi, who was a vice president with Twitter, was leading teams across Asia Pacific and the Middle East.
He is passionate about social change and the impact of technology on it. Before joining Twitter, Rishi was the director of Knight Foundation. There, he led investments in tech and media, and built a rich portfolio including Urban Innovation Exchange, Detroit4Detroit, Hatch Detroit, Code For America, Community PlanIt, Mobilize.org, TurboVote, and so on.
He co-founded Michigan Corps, an initiative to help Michiganders create social change in their home state, and was director of strategy with College Summit, a social enterprise pushing college enrollment rates of low-income high schools across America.
Rishi has also worked with Google, as aide to CEO, policy analyst, and later led public-private partnerships, corporate philanthropy, public policy advocacy, and government affairs for Google across India and South Asia.
See: Twitter is now worth less than its Chinese clone
The trouble with Twitter
Two words sum up the trouble with Twitter: ‘monetization’ and ‘trolling’.
In India, it tried out experiments in monetization. One of these was the acquisition of ZipDial, which had created an India-specific business around the phenomenon of ‘missed calls.’ (A call is made as a signal for some action, such as reaching a destination or an acknowledgement.)
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