Facebook Confirms Google's Anand Tilak as Country Manager for Indonesia

Facebook has hired Anand Tilak away from Google to become its country manager for Indonesia. Tilak, who has had experience with agency, marketing, and advertising sales for over 10 years will be responsible for Facebook's operations in its fourth largest market with 65 million monthly users. There remains no public plans to open an office in Indonesia at this point however.

Tilak's appointment, which was first reported by Campaign Asia last week follows the hiring of Daud Aditirto as the person in charge of Facebook's growth in Indonesia earlier this year. While Aditirto is based in Jakarta, Tilak will be working primarily from Facebook's office in Singapore.

Prior to joining Facebook, Tilak spent over three years as a Google executive primarily dealing with agency relations and advertising sales and over six years at Yahoo in marketing and advertising. His strong agency background paints a very clear picture as to Facebook's intentions and strategies in its approach in Indonesia although Facebook currently remains in contract with Komli Media to handle all of its advertising sales activities in Southeast Asia.

A spokesperson for Facebook confirmed to DailySocial of the hiring. "Yes we confirm that Anand Tilak will join Facebook to lead and focus on providing marketing solutions to help our top businesses and agencies in Indonesia be successful on Facebook. He will be based in Singapore".

Facebook Vice President for Asia Pacific Dan Neary told The Jakarta Post in September, “We are managing a lot of these things remotely. A lot of the activities in educating advertisers on Facebook advertising tools are done online and also via call centers”. Despite this, Facebook will be adding more advertising specialists to its Indonesian operations, primarily on a strategic level. Neary dismissed any suggestions that Facebook will open an office in the country. "We do not have any news on an office opening up".