India is leading charter for emerging markets: Facebook

Facebook is focusing on growing user base and expanding partnerships with businesses in India, which is one of the key growth markets for the world's largest social networking platform.

"We (India) are leading the charter for the emerging markets for Facebook. We are part of Asia Pacific, which is the fastest growing region in the world in terms of Facebook revenue and India is a strategic focus within the region," Facebook's newly appointed India and South Asia head Umang Bedi said today.

He declined to comment on the revenue contribution from India saying the company does not share country-specific revenue.
 

India, with 166 million monthly active users, ranks as Facebook's second largest market in terms of number of users. About 85 million of these users log onto the platform every day, with most using their mobile phones to do so (81 million).

"India is the most critical and strategic market. Our business focus is three fold: grow the number of people who can connect on the platform, drive deep engagement by building relevant experiences and be valuable to our partners (brands)," he said.

Facebook is going to market with deep vertical focus, he added.

"Traditionally, we focused very heavily on e-commerce and FMCG. From the time I have joined, we have got dedicated teams addressing eight key verticals, including e-commerce, retail, travel, financial services, techno, telecom and auto," Bedi said.

The company is working with brands like Samsung, Ford, Garnier, Mondelez, Durex and Ola for bringing campaigns for consumers that are designed to target specific audiences.

Bedi said India ranks as the second largest country signing onto Blueprint, which offers self-paced online courses to businesses to help them master advertising on Facebook.

"Since March 2015, Blueprint eLearning has hit one million enrolment. India ranks as the second largest country signing onto Blueprint. The top five countries include the US, India, Egypt, Brazil and the UK," he said.

Besides India is also one of the top five adopters of Workplace - its enterprise communication platform - along with countries like Norway, the US, the UK and France.