Twitter actively on the hunt for SEA managing director as Arvinder Gujral exits

Arvinder Gujral, managing director of Twitter Southeast Asia and senior director of business development of APAC will be leaving his role after eight years with the company.

In a personal LinkedIn update, Gujral thanked the team for the “incredible ride” and “lifelong friendships”. Gujral took on the managing director role in 2017 and according to his LinkedIn, helped SEA to grow to become a top 10 revenue and audience market in the world in Twitter in four years.

Twitter has confirmed his departure from the company and said it is “actively looking for his replacement”.

“We thank Gujral for his contributions to Twitter and remain highly committed to Southeast Asia. We have strong teams in place to engage and support our customers, advertisers and partners in the Southeast Asian markets which are part of our Asia Pacific business. Overall, we continue to hire and invest in Asia Pacific to serve the public conversation across this high-growth region,” the statement read.

In a 2018 interview with MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, Gujral said that when he took on the role of managing director of SEA, he realised that many marketers in the region were stuck in the 2016 perception of Twitter.

Many thought Twitter had no scale in the region, and that it also wasn’t “growing fast enough”. “My first task was to reduce the gap between their perception and my reality,” he said. But he didn’t make his move immediately. Instead, he first focused on “listening [and] not doing anything proactive”. He added that focus needed to be placed on fortifying what “Twitter” meant for marketers in the region.

Prior to that, he was one of the founding member of Twitter India in 2013 and helped set up India operations. He also managed strategic partnerships and business development APAC, China and Australia focusing on audience growth thru strategic partnerships, Traffic Acquisition and Distribution, Content Syndication, SDK & API distribution and Data Licensing.

Before his time with Twitter, he was GM – head of data VAS, new products and Aircel Digital at Aircel.He also worked with companies such as Ciber, Infosys and Geodesic.

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