Facebook keen on e-governance services

After reaching 100 million users in India, social networking giant Facebook is gearing up to make the platform relevant to a larger number of people by moving into areas such as education and e-governance.

The aim is to reach a billion users and make Facebook a compelling platform for advertisers.

“We think Facebook can do much more than what it is today. For example, We are doing experiments with Airtel in Rwanda that aim to use technology for education. If it works we will extend to other countries, including India. The other area is e-governance services. We will work hard with the Government to make that happen,” Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, said in response to a question from BusinessLine.

Huge opportunity

India is now FB’s second-largest market after the US. The fast-paced growth of mobile and data services here makes it a huge opportunity for the company. Nearly 84 per cent of the users access Facebook on mobile handsets.

“India is a huge part of the global economy and an important country for Facebook. While the number of users in the US represents a large part of the population, the 100 million users we have here do not represent a large part of the Indian population. This means there’s a huge opportunity to grow in India,” Sandberg said.

Facebook has one of its four global centres in India, contributing to its global business. The company is also looking at the possibility of starting research and development here.

“We are just in the process of opening out our engineering locations and we will continue to consider India. There’s strong engineering talent here and we will take that seriously,” said Sandberg.

Read full interview on p7