Senior Indian-origin exec Karandeep Anand to lead Facebook Workplace

Menlo Park-based social media company Facebook has chosen senior Indian-origin executive Karandeep Anand to lead its London-based enterprise connectivity platform Workplace, his LinkedIn profile shows.

Anand, who joined Facebook in 2015 after completing a 15-year stint at Microsoft, will work with Facebook vice-president Julien Codorniou who was earlier heading Workplace, a report by business news channel CNBC said.

The report further added that while Anand is expected to handle most of the product and engineering teams that include data scientists and researchers as well, Codorniou will drive sales and partnerships.

Previously, Anand served as the head of product for other Facebook divisions such as Marketplace, Audience Network and Ad Solutions.

"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's LinkedIn profile read.

“Karandeep joins Workplace from Marketplace and brings with him a wealth of experience from both a consumer and enterprise background. We're excited to have him on board," CNBC quoted a Facebook spokeswoman as saying.

Workplace, which has been in business for the last two years, has customers such as Walmart, Starbucks and Chevron, the report added.

However, the enterprise connectivity platform is still behind rivals such as Slack and Microsoft. According to a Facebook report published in 2017, Workplace had 30,000 organisations as customers in comparison to Microsoft Teams and Slack being used by 329,000 and 500,000 organisations respectively. Slack also has 70,000 paid customers, CNBC reported.