NEW DELHI: Facebook, a world’s largest amicable media company, has crossed 100 million active users in India — a second country, after a United States, in that it has finished so. And it already has a new figure in mind for India: one billion users. Confirming a channel of a “landmark” of 100 million on Mar 31, Javier Olivan, a association central in assign of tellurian growth, told ET: “Now, we demeanour brazen to 1 billion in India — that’s a opposite concentration and challenge.”
In a 40-minute video call on Apr 7 from Facebook domicile in Menlo Park, California, Olivan spelled out 3 extended points as partial of a 10-year highway map to boost a user bottom in India manifold. One, work with telecom, record and handset companies to boost internet penetration, including underneath a Internet.org initiative. Two, yield giveaway simple Internet services to mobile users, and poke them to welcome data, as it has finished in a Philippines and Paraguay.
Three, give product expansion a mobile-first orientation. “The initial device that people will have to enter a connected universe in India is a low-end mobile phone,” explains Olivan, who is vice-president, expansion analytics, and is one of a 3 executives who news directly to owner Mark Zuckerberg. “If we go to examination a product and start with a desktop version, Mark will flog we out. Everybody has to consider mobile.”
The climb of Facebook in India has been rapid and has been powered by a mobile phone. When a American association set adult a initial India bureau in 2010, in Hyderabad, it had 8 million users in a country. Company total state that 84 million of a 100 million users in India entrance a amicable networking site from their mobile devices.
Facebook, that was set adult in 2004, had 1.23 billion users opposite a universe as of Dec 31, 2013. In 2013, it posted revenues of $7.8 billion. “In a final 3 years, Facebook doubled a user bottom globally, from 600 million to 1.2 billion,” says Jitender Miglani, amicable media analyst, Forrester Research. “In a same period, in India, it grew some-more than 5 times from 17 million to 100 million.”
However, monetisation of that user bottom stays a challenge. Facebook does not put out India-specific income figures, though Forrester estimates a India revenues during $40-50 million. Company total uncover that, in a initial entertain of 2013, a normal income per user in Asia was $0.6. This was scarcely one-sixth that of a $3.5 Facebook warranted per user in US and Canada.
This opening should slight in time, feels Miglani. “At 100 million users, Facebook is profitable to any marketer. It will attract a lot of share of digital ad spending.” For now, a concentration in markets like India is to constraint users. “We are focussing on a expansion side of a company,” says Olivan.
On that front, it faces hurdles from broad-suite offerings like Google+, as good as focused start-ups like Snapchat. “Google has 8 times a revenues of Facebook and is a threat,” says Miglani.
Jessie Paul, CEO of Paul Writer Strategic Advisory, a Bangalore-based selling consultancy, points out that Facebook still has to secure itself on a mobile. “Facebook is a desktop story. It was not combined for mobile initial and that’s where new internet users are. Facebook for mobile is not as cold as on a desktop,” she says. What goes in a favour, she adds, is that “there’s no choice as nonetheless with a same kind of heft as Facebook.”
Article source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/33465248.cms