What happened
TechCrunch reports that Sandhya Devanathan, Meta’s India and Southeast Asia vice president, is leaving the company to join OpenAI. OpenAI told TechCrunch that Devanathan will be based in Singapore and report to Asia-Pacific managing director Kiran Mani. Her responsibilities will include consumer growth, enterprise adoption, partnerships, regulatory engagement and operations across Southeast Asia and Australia.
TechCrunch reports that Sandhya Devanathan, Meta’s vice president for India and Southeast Asia, is leaving Meta after more than a decade at the company to join OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. OpenAI told TechCrunch that Devanathan will be based in Singapore and report to Kiran Mani, OpenAI’s managing director for Asia-Pacific. The report does not provide a start date, compensation details or information about the size of Devanathan’s prospective team.
According to TechCrunch, Devanathan will oversee consumer growth, enterprise adoption, partnerships, regulatory engagement and operations across Southeast Asia and Australia. Those responsibilities span both commercial activity and government relations, but the report does not specify which countries or partnerships will receive immediate priority. It also does not describe particular products, customers or regulatory initiatives that Devanathan will handle.
TechCrunch reports that the move comes days after Prabhjeet Singh joined OpenAI as its India head. Singh previously spent more than a decade at Uber, where he led its India and South Asia business. TechCrunch also reports that OpenAI has opened offices in Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney and Delhi over the past two years. The report presents these appointments and offices as part of OpenAI’s expanding Asia-Pacific presence, without stating a specific regional hiring target or business goal.
Following Devanathan’s departure, TechCrunch reports that Meta’s India managing director, Arun Srinivas, will report directly to Benjamin Joe, Meta’s vice president for Asia Pacific. Devanathan joined Meta in 2016 and held several leadership roles, including leading the company’s Asia-Pacific gaming business, before becoming vice president for India and Southeast Asia in June 2025. TechCrunch says a person familiar with the matter described Devanathan as involved in Meta’s decision process in India; that characterization has not been independently confirmed.
Source details: techcrunch.com ↗
Why it matters
The appointment gives OpenAI a senior regional executive as it expands its Asia-Pacific operations and follows the recent appointment of an India head. It also places a former Meta leader with experience in the region at a company seeking broader consumer and enterprise adoption. The practical effect of the move, including its effect on OpenAI’s regulatory relationships, remains unknown.
The appointment matters because OpenAI’s stated remit for Devanathan combines market development with regulatory engagement. Consumer growth and enterprise adoption determine how AI products reach users and organizations, while partnerships and operations affect how those products are distributed and supported. TechCrunch reports the appointment and OpenAI’s description of the role, but there is no public evidence in the source showing what immediate business or policy results will follow.
The move also adds regional experience to OpenAI’s leadership at a time when the company is building a larger Asia-Pacific footprint. TechCrunch reports that OpenAI has offices in five cities across the region and has recently appointed an India head. That sequence may indicate an effort to deepen local operations, but the source does not establish a formal strategy, projected revenue, user numbers or planned investment associated with the appointments.
For businesses and public officials in the region, regulatory engagement is likely to be a practical part of the role. OpenAI’s products may face differing rules and expectations across countries concerning privacy, safety, competition, content and deployment. However, the source does not identify any policy commitments by Devanathan or OpenAI, and it does not independently verify how Indian or other regional authorities view the appointment.
The timing is also notable because TechCrunch describes growing scrutiny of Meta in India. The report says Meta apologized after Instagram mistakenly restricted a post by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in July, and that Indian authorities summoned Meta executives, including chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan. The source links this context to Devanathan’s departure but does not establish that scrutiny caused her decision to leave.
What to watch next
Key unknowns include when Devanathan will start, the size and structure of her team, and which partnerships or regulatory initiatives she will oversee. OpenAI’s regional office expansion and the work of its India leadership will show whether the appointment leads to concrete changes. Meta’s succession plans and its continuing scrutiny by Indian authorities also warrant attention.
The first concrete signal will be the scope of Devanathan’s mandate once she starts. OpenAI has not, according to TechCrunch’s report, disclosed a start date, reporting structure beyond Mani, staffing levels or specific operational targets. Those details would help distinguish a broad regional leadership role from a narrower commercial or government-relations assignment.
OpenAI’s regional activity will also be important to monitor. New partnerships, enterprise deployments, product availability or additional offices could show how the company translates its Asia-Pacific expansion into services used by people and organizations. The source does not announce any such deployment, and no assumptions should be made about availability or local market access based solely on the appointment.
Regulatory engagement will require particular scrutiny. Devanathan’s responsibilities reportedly include working with regulators, but TechCrunch provides no details about her priorities, planned meetings or OpenAI’s positions on regional AI rules. Future public filings, government statements or clearly attributed company announcements would be needed to establish whether the role produces measurable policy or compliance changes.
Meta’s response is another open question. TechCrunch reports that Arun Srinivas will report directly to Benjamin Joe after Devanathan’s departure, but it does not say whether Meta will appoint a replacement, alter its India and Southeast Asia structure or change its response to the issues described in the article. TechCrunch reports that Indian authorities have also raised concerns about child sexual abuse material on Meta’s platforms; Meta said it removed violating ads and accounts, rejected claims that it knowingly targeted such advertisements based on inappropriate interests, and said it removed 160,000 accounts in India over six months based on signals of child-exploitative activity. Those claims and figures come from the report and Meta’s statements and have not been independently confirmed here.
