Brands
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.
Brands
Reserve Bank of India cancels Paytm Payments Bank licence
Central bank cites compliance failures; curbs tighten as wind-up looms
MUMBAI: India’s banking watchdog delivered its sharpest blow yet to Paytm Payments Bank, cancelling its licence and effectively ending its ability to operate as a bank under the law.
The Reserve Bank of India said the entity can no longer conduct banking business under the Banking Regulation Act, citing concerns that its affairs were not being run in the interest of depositors or the public and that it had failed to meet licence conditions.
The move escalates a crackdown that has been building for months. The bank had already been barred from onboarding new customers since March 11, 2022, and later faced restrictions on deposits, credit and wallet top-ups. In January 2024, the central bank ordered it to stop accepting fresh deposits, pointing to persistent non-compliance, including lapses in customer due diligence, use of funds and technology systems.
Operationally, the bank is now on a tight leash. It may process withdrawals of existing deposits and facilitate loan referrals through banking correspondents, but it cannot take fresh deposits.
The central bank said it would apply to the high court to wind up the bank.
Paytm sought to ringfence the fallout. In a regulatory filing, it said the licence cancellation applies to Paytm Payments Bank Limited, a separate entity, and should not be attributed to One 97 Communications. It added that there is no exposure or material business arrangement with the bank and that it operates independently, without Paytm’s board or management involvement.
“As informed earlier, Paytm (One 97 Communications Limited) and its services, which have been operating without interruption, will continue to operate uninterrupted. These include the Paytm app, Paytm UPI, Paytm Gold and all other services offered by its subsidiaries and associated companies,” the company said.
The distinction may reassure users of the app ecosystem, but the regulator’s verdict is unequivocal. After years of warnings, caps and curbs, the payments bank experiment at Paytm is being shut down—decisively, and with little room left to manoeuvre.
