India has become a critical and strategic market for Facebook which has some 166 million active users under its belt. Notwithstanding the fact that the social site contributes $4 billion to the country’s kitty besides 335,000 jobs in India. Already the company has a strategic partnership with the cream of India’s advertisers.
Facebook is on an ambitious drive to connect with another billion users, and 70% of them will be coming from Asia with Indians accounting for nearly 337 million. Mobility has become the moving force which will drive the economy in the coming decades.
The third quarter results have been declared by Facebook, and it has reported 166 million monthly active users, 159 million monthly cell phone active users, 85 million daily active users, and 81 million mobile daily active users in India.
Outlining the five trends which are fueling the change in the country, Umang Bedi, MD, Facebook India and South Asia said that there had been a massive geographic shift in mobile user growth towards Asia, coupled with the fact that both Internet and mobility is synonymous with one another. The Internet of things is burgeoning and so are connected devices, and the economy is moving towards a network level from a mobile ecosystem.
India is also one of the top markets for developers for building Facebook outside the US. The social media site is now available in 12 Indian languages, and more than 80% of the top performing apps in India are integrated with the social networking site. For the internet to become locally relevant, it must have local contents, local languages, and local awareness so that it could be made more productive for the population.
Facebook has embarked on a three-pronged business strategy for India. The first of course will be to connect people followed by building a process that is relevant and finally becoming productive for its partners.
