Fast-growing startup WhatsApp was the talk of
tech town on Thursday after social media giant
Facebook announced a $19 billion buyout of
the mobile-messaging application. While the
deal created an instant global buzz, an Indian
took centrestage in the aftermath.
Having crossed 450 million active users,
WhatsApp’s business head Neeraj Arora (35)
has had a lot on his plate in the past few
months. He told an Indian business news
channel in November last that WhatsApp had
no plan of selling out to Facebook or Google.
Now, with a stunning price tag of $19 billion
for a company that employs just 55 people,
Arora’s portfolio has grown remarkably.
Arora has two US patents to his credit —
methods and systems for email attachment
distribution and management and second for
an email integrated file delivery.
According to Arora’s LinkedIn profile, he takes
care of “all things business at WhatsApp”. He
has previously worked at Google as a senior
member of the corporate development team.
Arora, who is an Indian Institute of
Technology-Delhi graduate, also led Google’s
acquisitions and strategic investments across
products and geographies.
Before working for Google, Arora worked as
chief manager at Times Internet Limited,
working closely with the investments and
corporate strategy team at Indiatimes, a
subsidiary of The Times of India Group.
Read: WhatsApp: From food stamps to $19
billion dollar deal
Arora’s LinkedIn profile page says he is a “self-
learnt hacker” who “built pieces of the core
technology” at Accellion, a developer of
enterprise software for mobile file sharing. He
is also a management graduate with a degree
from the Indian School of Business.
With Facebook’s plan of making no change in
the way WhatsApp functions, Arora will have to
drive the integration of the business
operations of the messaging platform with the
social networking website. “Nothing will
change,” he replied on Thursday to a query by
one of his 4,769 followers on Twitter: “As a
loyal WhatsApp user, I'm pretty sad it's been
sold to Facebook. Privacy is a key concern,
another is unnecessary add-ons to the app.
(sic)”
Arora also denied that WhatsApp’s
development engineers were based outside the
United States. “Everyone is in Mountain View,”
he tweeted after a follower posted, “Note
WhatsApps entire dev team in Russia. Anti-
immigrants working hard to keep foreigners
out. Shows they don't need to be here
anymore (sic).”
Many of the engineers at the Silicon Valley-
based firm earlier worked remotely — most of
them from Russia. WhatsApp’s co-founder Jan
Koum today provides recommendations for a
few of them on his LinkedIn page.
One of his major achievements in India was to
convince Anil Ambani’s Reliance
Communications to bundle unlimited use of
WhatsApp with a Rs. 16/month data plan. The
scheme was an instant success. Arora also
pushed Tata Docomo to offer unlimited
WhatsApp usage for Rs. 15 for 15 days.
Arora, who is based out of San Francisco and
Hyderabad, did not respond to an email query
by HT.
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