Nilay Arora, who is the VP of Marketing and Business Development at WeChat, will head Tencent’s India operations, after Rahul Razdan left the company to join Mango Games. Arora has been with Ibibo since 2007 and was part of the team that helped launch WeChat in India. Ibibo was then jointly owned by Naspers and Tencent. Naspers and Tencent decided to go their separate ways in India last year (2013), after Tencent’s option to acquire 50% in Ibibo expired, and Arora moved, along with the Ibibo Games and Mobile division, to Tencent. Prior to joining WeChat, he has worked with Hindustan Times as Senior Manager - Consumer Marketing, Radio Mirchi as Account Manager and Ballarpur Industries as Assistant Manager. Tencent’s WeChat doesn’t provide any country-wide breakup, but it had claimed to have crossed 100 million overseas users in August 2013. In India, WeChat recently tied-up with local search engine AskMe to provide location-specific local searches, deals and classifieds through an official account ‘AskMeSearch’ on WeChat. It also launched an in-app mobile gaming section called WeChat Games with an option to buy add-on items though in-app purchases to improve their in-game capabilities. In India, WeChat competes against WhatsApp, Line, Viber, Skype, Plustxt, Gupshup messenger, Hike among others. * Here is the full statement from a Wechat spokesperson: “Rahul Razdan has moved on from 10c India Internet Private Ltd. where he helped launch WeChat in India, to pursue other opportunities. Going forward, Nilay Arora would be at the helm of marketing and business development initiatives for WeChat in India. Nilay has been actively involved in growth and development…
