Meta's India and Southeast Asia VP Sandhya Devanathan joins OpenAI

OpenAI hires Meta's India and Southeast Asia chief

OpenAI has hired Sandhya Devanathan, Meta's vice president for India and Southeast Asia, as it continues to assemble a senior leadership team across Asia-Pacific. OpenAI confirmed the move to TechCrunch, which first reported the story.

Devanathan will be based in Singapore and report to OpenAI's Asia-Pacific managing director, Kiran Mani. Her remit covers consumer growth, enterprise adoption and partnerships, regulatory engagement and operations across Southeast Asia and Australia — a brief that spans both commercial expansion and the government relations work that AI companies increasingly need as regulators across the region shape rules for the technology.

Devanathan leaves Meta after more than a decade at the company, according to TechCrunch. She joined in 2016, held several leadership roles including running Meta's Asia-Pacific gaming business, and was appointed vice president for India and Southeast Asia in June 2025. A person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that she was involved in the company's decision-making process in India — experience that maps directly onto the regulatory portfolio in her new job.

A rapid regional build-out

The hire lands just days after another significant appointment: Prabhjeet Singh joined OpenAI as its India head after more than a decade at Uber, where he led the ride-hailing company's India and South Asia business.

The two hires point to a deliberate regional structure, with Singh focused on India and Devanathan covering Southeast Asia and Australia. They also fit a broader pattern: OpenAI has been expanding its presence across Asia-Pacific, opening offices in Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney and Delhi over the past two years, according to TechCrunch.

The reshuffle inside Meta

Devanathan's departure triggers a change in Meta's own structure. The company's India managing director, Arun Srinivas, will now report directly to Benjamin Joe, Meta's vice president for Asia-Pacific, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. That places India's leadership one step closer to regional management at a sensitive moment for the company in the country.

Mounting pressure in India

Meta's operations in India have drawn growing government attention in recent weeks. Earlier this month, the company apologized after Instagram mistakenly restricted a post by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in July. Indian officials summoned Meta executives over the incident, including chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan.

New Delhi has also pressed the company on child safety. Last month, the Indian government sought an explanation after a BBC report found Instagram advertisements that allegedly offered access to child sexual abuse material. In a blog post at the time, Meta said it had removed the violating ads and accounts and rejected suggestions that it knowingly targeted such advertisements at users based on inappropriate interests. The company also said it had removed 160,000 accounts in India over six months based on signals indicating child-exploitative activity.

The reporting does not connect Devanathan's departure to this scrutiny. But the timing means Meta is rearranging its India reporting lines at the same time as it is being summoned and asked to account for its platform's behavior in the country.

Why it matters

The move is the latest evidence that the talent war between AI labs and established tech companies now extends to senior operating executives, not just researchers. For OpenAI, bringing in a leader who has spent years navigating regulators and markets in India and Southeast Asia addresses one of its biggest constraints abroad: policy engagement, which sits inside Devanathan's new responsibilities.

For Meta, losing a veteran who helped steer decisions in India comes at an awkward moment, as the company defends its content moderation and advertising practices to the Indian government. The wider signal is that Asia-Pacific has become a primary front in the AI industry's global expansion, and executives with local commercial and regulatory experience are the scarce resource both sides are competing for.