Amazon’s policy chief skips over to Meta

NEW DELHI: Aman Jain has clearly mastered the art of the big-tech shuffle. After a two-year stint steering Amazon through India’s treacherous regulatory waters as director of public policy, he is decamping next month to Meta as senior director and country head of public policy. It is a timely move: Meta’s family of apps—WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook—dominate Indian screens, yet face mounting scrutiny from regulators who seem to discover new ways to make Mark Zuckerberg’s life difficult every quarter.

He  steps into Shivnath Thukral’s shoes, who left Meta earlier this year to  join fintech major PhonePe. Jain is expected to take charge in early 2026 and will report directly to vice president of policy for Asia Pacific (APAC) Simon Milner.

Jain is no stranger to navigating Delhi’s labyrinthine corridors of power. His CV reads like a greatest-hits compilation of tech giants grappling with Indian bureaucracy. He spent over seven years at Google, ascending from policy manager to head of government affairs, with a brief detour as industry head for fintech. Before Amazon came calling in late 2023, he had already cut his teeth advising India’s minister of youth affairs and sports and consulting for the US Department of Justice.

The appointment suggests Meta is girding itself for policy battles ahead. India, with its 750 million internet users, is too lucrative to lose but too complex to navigate without serious local firepower.  Jain’s LinkedIn post gushes about Meta’s “vibrant creator and small business ecosystem”—code, perhaps, for the monetisation engine that regulators increasingly want to tax, regulate or simply understand.

His earlier career offers intriguing texture. As president and chief executive of Aiesec International from 2009 to 2010, he ran a global youth organisation spanning 110 countries, wrangling a diverse 18-person team and achieving 50 per cent growth. Not bad for someone in their twenties. 

Later roles at Peter & David Enterprises and various Washington think-tanks added private-sector nous and American policy chops to his repertoire.

Meta’s gambit is clear: hire someone who knows how Delhi thinks, how Silicon Valley operates, and how to keep both reasonably happy. Whether  Jain can square that circle whilst India’s government tightens the regulatory screws remains the billion-dollar—or should that be billion-rupee—question.