Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg will hold a Townhall Question and Answer session at IIT-Delhi later this month to connect with Indians, whom he described as "one of our most active and engaged communities" on social media.
India - one of Facebook's biggest communities
"More than 130 million people use Facebook in India. I'm looking forward to hearing directly from one of our most active and engaged communities," Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook post, wherein he announced to be hosting his next Townhall Q&A in Delhi on October 28. "If you have a question, please ask below in the comments. To vote for a question, just like it. I'll be answering questions from across Facebook as well as from a live audience at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi," Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg's India story
Last month in Palo Alto, Zuckerberg hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a Townhall Question and Answer session. "India is personally very important to the history of our company here. This is a story that I have not told publicly and very few people know," he said at the Facebook headquarters on September 27. "Early on in our history, before things were really going well and we had hit a tough patch, and a lot of people wanted to buy Facebook and we thought we should sell the company, I went and saw one of my mentors, Steve Jobs, and he told me that in order to reconnect with what I believed is the mission of the company, I should visit this temple that he had gone to in India early in his evolution of thinking about what he wanted Apple and his vision of the future to be," he said.
"So I went and I traveled for almost a month and seeing the people, seeing how people connected, and having the opportunity to feel how much better the world could be if everyone had a stronger ability to connect, reinforced for me the importance of what we were doing. And that is something I have always remembered over the last ten years as we built Facebook," Zuckerberg said.
Nasscom partners with Facebook to support developers
Industry body Nasscom has partnered Facebook to launch a new initiative to support developers building apps and mobile websites for "new-to-internet" users. Under the 'Leaders Building for the Next Billion Program', Nasscom will invite developers and students through an application process. Of these, 10 developers will be selected who will be provided with technical, marketing, financial support and leadership skills to build their applications and businesses, Nasscom said in a statement.
Social networking giant Facebook is the first partner for the initiative.
Facebook will fund the creation of this track at 'Nasscom 10,000 Startups' and welcomes partnerships with other technology leaders to strengthen and expand the programme. "The participants will also qualify for $80,000 worth of support through our FBStart programme and additional ad credits to build their business," Facebook said. Nasscom added, "They will further be connected to industry leaders like CEOs, thought leaders, VCs, ecosystem evangelists, social change leaders, funders and the media to bring public attention to their commitment, solutions and impact such that they inspire many other developers to build innovative solutions for new-to-internet users."
India has one of the world's largest internet user bases with a majority of new users coming online through their mobile devices.
