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Facebook Inc, which closed its acquisition of mobile messaging service WhatsApp on Monday, has no near-term plan to make money from the service, said Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg.
"I think the market for WhatsApp should be in billions, definitely more than a billion people we should be able to connect using WhatsApp in the next few years and then hopefully more after that. So that's our primary goal we are trying to take pretty long term perspective on this. We really have one core good business Facebook so rather than just trying to focus on how to make money on WhatsApp in the near term. The bigger thing I am focussed on is how to make biggest opportunity and connect to most people," said Zuckerberg, who is visiting India to participate in an event to boost Internet usage.
Facebook's final WhatsApp acquisition price tag has risen an additional $3 billion to roughly $22 billion because of the increased value of Facebook's stock in recent months.
WhatsApp works across different types of phones, across borders, and without advertising. The app only charges a 99 cent annual subscription fee, which is waived for the first year.
Zuckerberg, 30, is in India on a two-day visit and was speaking at the first summit for Internet.org, an organization led by Facebook which, he said, 'wants to connect the whole word'.
"When you bring internet to a country like India you are not just helping the people who don't have access to the internet today, you really are improving the world for everyone else too because the person who doesn't have tool need to bring that company, bring that idea to the world that can help people from these other countries, now have those tools to really profound thing that we can play some small role in making that happen, that's a huge deal," he said.
Zuckerberg is also scheduled to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi today.
His visit comes close on the heels of visits by high profiled US tech VIPs Satya Nadella of Microsoft and Jeff Bezos of Amazon.
