Top Indian-origin executive to head Facebook’s Workplace

indica News Bureau –

Senior Indian-origin executive Karandeep Anand has been elevated to head Workplace by Facebook – the social media giant’s two-year-old enterprise communication tool.

Anand’s appointment comes at a time when Facebook is embroiled in several controversies, including security breach, a #DeleteFacebook movement, and its founder Mark Zuckerberg being summoned to testify before Congress.

In his role, Anand, an IIT Hyderabad graduate, will handle the Workplace product team, which includes developers, engineers, researchers and data scientists.

“I’m excited to now be part of the journey of bringing Workplace to companies across the globe and help them unlock the potential of their biggest asset – people,” Anand wrote on his LinkedIn profile.

He will work closely with Julien Codorniou, the Facebook vice-president who has been the leader of Workplace. Codorniou will remain in charge of sales and partnership.

A lot is expected from Anand, especially at a time when at least seven senior Facebook executives have resigned from the company this year. WhatsApp co-founder and CEO Jan Koum, Instagram co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom and Chief Technical Officer Mike Krieger and Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe, were a few high-profile exits from Facebook in 2018.

Anand, who was earlier Head of Product for Facebook Marketplace and Payments services, was responsible for powering commerce across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp.

He joined Facebook in June 2015, and worked on infrastructure, Facebook Platform, Facebook Audience Network, games and payments.

“We’re thrilled that Karandeep is joining Workplace as its new head of Workplace, effectively immediately,” a Facebook spokeswoman told CNBC.

Prior to joining Facebook, Anand spend 15 years at Microsoft in various key roles. He worked across a wide variety of products and services ranging from Windows Client, Windows Server, System Center, and Windows Azure.

Formerly known as Facebook at Work, Workplace by Facebook provides a powerful enterprise collaboration service. It was launched in 2016 with a fee-based revenue model, and no advertising. Some of its customers include Walmart, Starbucks, and Campbell’s.

Facebook recently announced that the tool, which is priced at $3/month per user for its premium product, had secured ISO 27018 certification to add to the ISO 27001 accreditation it achieved in October 2017.

According to a Facebook report in October 2017, Workplace is used by 30,000 organizations. It is yet to catch up with rivals like Microsoft and Slack in the enterprise communications software market.

Microsoft Teams is used by 329,000 organizations while Slack by 500,000 organizations, including 70,000 paying organizations, the according to a CNBC report.

Recently, in a bid to build trust with customers, Workplace announced that it will move on to a website domain (Workplace.com) separate from Facebook.com next year.

Facebook said that even though it already separates consumer user data with the information companies share through Workplace, it now wants to create a full separation between its social network and the enterprise productivity app.

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