Facebook to ride Digital India waves: India MD-designate Umang Bedi

Bedi, who was the managing director at Adobe for South Asia, will soon take up the charge of Facebook’s India business and will lead in building and maintaining strategic relationships with top clients and regional agencies in the country.

Bedi, who was the managing director at Adobe for South Asia, will soon take up the charge of Facebook’s India business and will lead in building and maintaining strategic relationships with top clients and regional agencies in the country.

Facebook India's managing director designate Umang Bedi on Tuesday said that the next growth of the Mark Zuckerberg-founded company is expected to come from the growing digital revolution in the country boosted by government initiatives like Digital India.

"The digital ecosystem in India is going through a boom and we can see how brick and mortal systems are moving online to capture more growth. Even advertisements are moving to the digital space which previously laid a lot of emphasis on Television," Bedi told Hindustan Times saying that he was analysing the market from an Adobe perspective.

Bedi's comments assumes significance as Facebook has said that it works with more than 85% of the top 100 advertisers in India identified by Kantar. 100% of those advertisers use video within their Facebook campaigns in India. Kantar is a market research agency that is also part of the WPP media group.

Also, Bedi's stint at Adobe saw its digital business grow. The company also partnered with e-commerce, travel and banking clients like Flipkart,IndiGo, Jabong and Makemytrip.com for the same with Bedi at the helm.

The Menlo Park-based social media giant had earlier in the day said that Bedi, who was the managing director at Adobe for South Asia, will soon take up the charge of Facebook's India business and will lead in building and maintaining strategic relationships with top clients and regional agencies in the country.

"Umang comes to Facebook with close to two decades of leadership experience covering sales, marketing and partnerships where he successfully built teams and grew businesses for multinational companies. Prior to joining Facebook, Umang was the managing director of the South Asia region at Adobe. He was responsible for growing their business in India and helping India grow to amongst the leading markets for Adobe in the APAC and global regions," the company statement read.

The Adobe top executive also said that Facebook has a lot of opportunity in India as nearly 1.05 billion Indians are still not connected to the Internet. Currently, India has 277 million internet users and 142 million Indians are on Facebook. The social networking site has 1.65 billion users globally.

WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum is breaking ties with Facebook amid a privacy scandal that had dogged the social network for weeks. Koum confirmed his departure from WhatsApp on his Facebook page saying was time to “move on” but did not elaborate on his reason for leaving. To which Zuckerberg replied that would miss working with Koum. Koum also plans to resign from Facebook's board of directors according to Washington Post and may also have been embroiled in a rift with Facebook management over the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal which involved the collection of personal data of up to 87 million Facebook users. This data was allegedly used to attempt to influence voter opinion during the 2016 US Presidential elections.

WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum is breaking ties with Facebook amid a privacy scandal that had dogged the social network for weeks. Koum confirmed his departure from WhatsApp on his Facebook page saying was time to “move on” but did not elaborate on his reason for leaving. To which Zuckerberg replied that would miss working with Koum. Koum also plans to resign from Facebook's board of directors according to Washington Post and may also have been embroiled in a rift with Facebook management over the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal which involved the collection of personal data of up to 87 million Facebook users. This data was allegedly used to attempt to influence voter opinion during the 2016 US Presidential elections.

Vivo V15 Pro has launched in India with a price tag of Rs 28,990. Scheduled to go on sale on March 6, the latest Vivo smartphone comes with all-screen design with no notch. It also has in-screen fingerprint sensor.

Highlight of the phone is 32-megapixel selfie shooter which is part of a pop-up camera module, similar to Vivo Nex. Vivo claims the pop-up camera takes 0.46 seconds to launch. On the back, Vivo V15 Pro has three cameras including 48-megapixel, 5-megapixel and 8-megapixel sensors.

Vivo V15 Pro is also one of the first phones to run Qualcomm's Snapdragon 675 processor. Key specifications of Vivo V15 Pro include 6GB of RAM, 128GB built-in storage, and 3,700mAh battery. It runs on Android 9 Pie out-of-the-box.

Vivo V15 Pro has launched in India with a price tag of Rs 28,990. Scheduled to go on sale on March 6, the latest Vivo smartphone comes with all-screen design with no notch. It also has in-screen fingerprint sensor.

Highlight of the phone is 32-megapixel selfie shooter which is part of a pop-up camera module, similar to Vivo Nex. Vivo claims the pop-up camera takes 0.46 seconds to launch. On the back, Vivo V15 Pro has three cameras including 48-megapixel, 5-megapixel and 8-megapixel sensors.

Vivo V15 Pro is also one of the first phones to run Qualcomm's Snapdragon 675 processor. Key specifications of Vivo V15 Pro include 6GB of RAM, 128GB built-in storage, and 3,700mAh battery. It runs on Android 9 Pie out-of-the-box.

Kirthiga Reddy, who Bedi will replace, also congratulated him after the announcement on Facebook. "I'm excited about how well positioned our business in India is, to grow from strength to strength, and excited to continue to work with the world's largest global advertisers with a focus on emerging markets in my new role at Facebook headquarters. It's a privilege to be part of our mission to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected," she wrote.