Rishi Jaitly, Twitter's India man, moves on

Rishi Jaitly, the Twitter executive who helped set up, and later led, the company’s India operations, announced his departure from Twitter on Tuesday. In a series of tweets, Jaitly, whose latest appointment was as vice president, media, for Asia Pacific and Middle East, North Africa, called his four-year stint at the company “the leadership experience of a lifetime.” He added that his mission to harness tech and media’s scale to connect users and citizens to their voice, leadership or agency, in places they care about, remained.

“He has created bold, strategic partnerships to enter and grow new markets for Twitter; and has successfully built up our media partnerships teams across the Asia Pacific and Middle East,” Twitter said in a statement.

Jaitly was the first person from Twitter on the ground in India in late-2012. In a 2015 Forbes India profile, he recalled “roaming the country from Delhi to Gandhinagar just letting people know that while you may be using Twitter, there are opportunities to invest with more ambition.” The global mission in India, Jaitly had then said, was “growth, growth, growth.”

Twitter, of course, continues to struggle with low user growth numbers globally. Speculation has also been rife about a possible sale. In a sign of continuing turmoil at the company, it announced the closing of its video-sharing service, Vine, and laid off 9 percent of its workforce last month as part of a restructuring process.