New Delhi: Facebook named its management team for India on Thursday which will be responsible for driving the expansion of the company as it looks to become the biggest social networker in the country.
In March, the California-based group announced a new office in the southern Indian IT hub of Hyderabad, which will deal with online advertising and customer support, much like other Facebook centres in the US and Ireland.
The decision to invest in India comes as Facebook is poised to become the biggest social networking site in the country measured by unique visitors, according to market research group comScore.
The leader had previously been Google's Orkut service, which had retained a strong presence in India and Brazil, but now appears to be faltering in the emerging markets.
After a global search, Facebook named Kirthiga Reddy, a computer science graduate who previously worked at US software group Phoenix Technologies in India, as director of online operations in India.
Manoj Varghese, a former HR manager for Google in the Asia Pacific region, was named as director of user operations.
"We've spent the past few months searching globally for a strong candidate capable of leading Facebook's ambitious operations in India," said Don Faul, director of global online operations for Facebook, in a statement.
Faul said in March that India had eight million people connecting actively through the site.
ComScore's latest research from July suggests Orkut has about 18-19 million unique visitors, with Facebook a few million behind but closing the gap fast.
