Umang Bedi joins Facebook as managing director, India

He replaces Kirthiga Reddy who decided to step down in February.

Facebook has appointed Umang Bedi as managing director, India. Bedi will lead in building and maintaining strategic relationships with top clients and regional agencies in the country. He takes over from Kirthiga Reddy, who will return to the US, to take on a new role at the company's headquarters at Menlo Park.

Bedi comes to Facebook with close to two decades of leadership experience, having covered sales, marketing, and partnerships, to successfully build teams and grow businesses for multinational companies.

Prior to joining Facebook, Bedi was managing director of the South Asia region at Adobe. He was responsible for growing its business in India and help India grow to one of the leading markets for Adobe in the APAC and global regions.

"India is known for its great talent pool and we are pleased to have (Umang) Bedi, a proven business executive, to lead our business in India. I also want to wish (Kirthiga) Reddy the very best in her new global role. Reddy has played a huge and key role in building our India business from scratch, and I know she will continue to deliver the same impact in the US," says Dan Neary, vice-president, Asia-Pacific, Facebook, in a press release.

Neary further adds, "Facebook is where people and businesses connect on mobile and with close to 150 million monthly active people in India, we see significant opportunities to help Indian businesses, large and small, deliver against their business objectives in the mobile world."

Commenting on his appointment, Bedi says in a press release, "I am thrilled to join Facebook and look forward to work with the talented teams in India, and to help brands and agencies grow their business on our platform. For me, it's a promising opportunity to participate in India's digital growth, and I can't think of a better place to be at."

Bedi is an engineering graduate from the University of Pune, an alumnus of the Harvard Business School, and the recipient of the prestigious '40 Under Forty: India's Hottest Business Leaders Award 2014', conferred by The Economic Times and Spencer Stuart in 2014.

Reddy, meanwhile, is set to join the global accounts team at Menlo Park, CA, where she will manage a set of global brands and also lead the emerging markets efforts globally for the global accounts team, which manages Facebook's relationships with the world's largest global advertisers.

Commenting on the development, Reddy says in a press release, "After six years in building our operations and business in India, it's hard to leave a team I now call family. The good news is that we will continue to work together."

She further adds, "As I look ahead, I am excited about how well-positioned our business is, to grow from strength-to-strength under Bedi's leadership, and with my next opportunity, to shape and drive our emerging markets strategy across some of the world's biggest brands."

Bedi will officially begin at Facebook in July 2016. Reddy will do so in August 2016.