Times Internet hires former Twitter exec Rishi Jaitly as CEO of Times Global Partners

Times Internet Ltd, the digital arm of media group Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd (BCCL), said on Wednesday it has appointed former Twitter India head Rishi Jaitly as the chief executive officer of Times Global Partners.

The move indicates Times Internet's intention to scale up its investments and partnerships with global technology and media platforms. Times Global has tied up with international Internet companies such as Uber, Airbnb, Coursera, Vice and Huffington Post, and has facilitated their entry in the Indian market.

"With Times' resources and Rishi's global perspective, capabilities and proven ability to lead, we are well positioned to enable the success of global companies in India and scale our business by orders of magnitude," said Satyan Gajwani, vice chairman, Times Internet, in a statement. "For our current partners, and those to come, the India opportunity remains unmatched and we are pleased that Times Global Partners has become the bridge of choice into and within India."

Jaitly previously led Twitter Inc's India operations for four years as vice president of Asia Pacific and Middle East businesses. He left the US company earlier this month, revealing on the microblogging site that he was moving on to pursue "new opportunities".

Jaitly worked with Google early in his career when he was a member of the tech giant's India management team, helping build the local business and leading strategic partnerships and public affairs for the company in South Asia. He has previously worked as an aide to Google chairman/chief executive Eric Schmidt and was director of the Knight Foundation, an investor in new media and journalism innovation, in America.

Jaitly said in the statement he would seek to expand on the success Times Global already enjoyed and build a global business that created value for The Times Group and global business partners.

Twitter has been in news for a few months now after it was reported that it was in talks with several technology companies such as Google and Salesforce to sell itself. However, it was reported last month that Salesforce would not be making a bid to buy the microblogging company.

Last month, Bloomberg reported that Twitter might cut 8% of its workforce, or 300 people. The firm has a market cap of about $14 billion and losses running at about $400 million a year, making Twitter an expensive bid for prospective buyers.

Shortly after Jaitly's resignation, Parminder Singh, Twitter's managing director for India, Southeast Asia and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) quit the company as well and was replaced by Maya Hari. In July, Twitter Inc's Asia chief Shailesh Rao resigned.

In September, Twitter halted operations at its global engineering centre at Bengaluru and laid off employees there. Last week, Twitter Inc's chief operating officer Adam Bain announced that he was leaving the company and would be replaced by chief financial officer Anthony Noto.