Rishi Jaitly quits Twitter in a series of tweets

ASIA-PACIFIC - Rishi Jaitly, Twitter's VP of media for Asia-Pacific, has stepped down amidst news reports of Twitter's plans to axe 8 percent of its workforce. 

According to Bloomberg, Twitter may eliminate around 300 people as it abandons plans to sell itself and will now go it alone, according to sources. 

Jaitly, who also heads Twitter India posted:

Today, after 4 years of user/business momentum in India & the region, I’m sharing my intention to move on to new opportunities, same mission

Twitter promoted Jaitly to the post last August in a bid to drive user growth in the region. Prior to the appointment he was Twitter's market director for India and Southeast Asia. He was responsible for establishing Twitter’s operations in India and growing content partnerships there, in Indonesia and the rest of Southeast Asia. He was previously head of public-private partnerships for Google in India and aide to then-CEO Eric Schmidt in California.

When contacted, Twitter would only respond to questions around Jaitly's replacement and reported plans to downsize with the following official statement:

We thank Rishi for his contributions, entrepreneurship and leadership over the past four years at Twitter. He 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.

He led our efforts to make Twitter the national zeitgeist for millions of users across the Asia Pacific and Middle East, as well as the place that TV and media organizations, government agencies, sports bodies, entertainment companies and influencers go to publish their content first and engage with their audience every day, including Twitter’s first international livestreaming deal for the Melbourne Cup in Australia.

There will be a smooth transition as his 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.

We wish him all the best and will continue to invest in these important regions to make Twitter the best way to see what’s happening right now around the world.

 

My mission remains the same: harness tech/media’s scale to connect users/citizens to their voice/agency/leadership in places they care about

— Rishi Jaitly (@rsjaitly) November 1, 2016