TWITTER INDIA HEAD MAHESHWARI GETS NEW US-BASED ROLE
Manish Maheshwari, the man who inadvertently became the face of a very public tussle between the Indian government and Twitter India, will be moving to the US in a new role. Confirming this, the company said Maheshwari, Twitter India’s managing director, will be based in San Francisco as senior director, Revenue Strategy and Operations focused on New Market Entry.
Manish Maheshwari, the man who inadvertently became the face of a very public tussle between the Indian government and Twitter India, will be moving to the US in a new role. Confirming this, the company said Maheshwari, Twitter India’s managing director, will be based in San Francisco as senior director, Revenue Strategy and Operations focused on New Market Entry.
“Thank you to @manishm for your leadership of our Indian business over the past 2+ years. Congrats on your new Us-based role in charge of revenue strategy and operations for new markets worldwide. Excited to see you lead this important growth opportunity for Twitter,” tweeted Twitter Japan Vice President Yu Sasamoto on Friday.
Twitter India has so far not named a successor to Maheshwari, whose name came up time and again in cases related to non-compliance with the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021.
Twitter’s face-off with the government involved issues such as refusal to take down content and failure to fully comply with the new IT Rules for social media companies. Maheshwari was named in at least three police complaints, ranging from showing an incorrect map of India to a video of alleged communal violence, which went viral. One of the complaints even had him filing a caveat in the Supreme Court.
In July, the Karnataka High Court quashed a notice issued by the Uttar Pradesh Police related to an FIR against Maheshwari.
Earlier in May, the Delhi Police served a notice on Maheshwari and Twitter India in connection with a toolkit allegedly made by the Indian National Congress and for tweets by some ruling party politicians being tagged as “manipulated media”.
In response to the notice, Twitter issued a statement saying it was concerned "with regards to the use of intimidation tactics by the police in response to enforcement of our global Terms of Service, as well as with core elements of the new IT Rules”.
Following this, Maheshwari was named in the UP FIR and court cases related to non-compliance of IT Rules.
In the ongoing cases in the Delhi and Karnataka high courts, Twitter said content regulation comes under the ambit of Twitter Inc, the Us-based firm, while Twitter India provides support services for promoting and marketing in India. Maheshwari even updated his Twitter bio to say, “Business @Twitterindia. Not in charge of content, which is managed by Twitter Inc.”
This was followed by contact details of Twitter’s India-based grievance officer, Vinay Prakash. The nodal contact person, as required by the IT Rules, is an exbytedance employee, Shahin Kamath, also based in India. The new appointees are employees of Twitter Inc and not of the India entity.
Before Twitter, Maheshwari worked at organisations such as Procter & Gamble and Mckinsey & Co. He also co-founded a mobile technology start-up, txtweb, which was incubated within American software firm Intuit.
Maheshwari was named in at least three police complaints, ranging from showing an incorrect map of India to a video of alleged communal violence, which went viral