 "Affordable Internet on agenda, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to meet Modi tomorrow")
After COO Sheryl Sandberg’s successful meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it’s now the turn of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to come calling.
And while he’s here he’s also going to be addressing a meet on low cost Internet and meet other Indian ministers.
While there are some who are opposed to Modi even meeting with Zuckerberg ( like this RSS functionary ), the Facebook founder is unlikely to face any closed doors as he roams the power corridors of Delhi to meet with officials regarding the improvement of internet connectivity in the country.
Modi famously utilised social media effectively during his Lok Sabha campaign, and has been open about his desire to spread government and civic messages via social media.
While Zuckerberg’s meeting with Modi is likely to dwell on how the Indian government can collaborate on Internet.org, which aims to make internet access affordable for people across the globe, he could end up receiving a small briefing on the Prime Minister’s ‘Digital India’ plan which has rather similar goals.
The Facebook founder will also be addressing the first Internet.org summit in Delhi on Thursday. The organisation is focussed on enabling the next five billion people without Internet access to come online and the founding members of the project include Facebook, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung.
The partners are collaborating on developing lower-cost, higher-quality smartphones and deploying Internet access in under-served communities.
The Internet.org summit will bring together experts, officials and industry leaders to focus on ways to deliver more Internet services for people in languages other than English.
India is a crucial market for Facebook with over 100 million users presently but apparently yields less than 0.1 per cent of the company’s revenues presently, something Zuckerbergis perhaps hoping will change as more people get access to the internet.
In July, when Facebook’s COO Sandberg visited India, the Prime Minister had talked abouthow Facebook could be used by his government to improving governance, how it could increase interaction between people and the government, and how it could be used to attract more tourists to India.
Zuckerberg is the third high profile CEO of a major tech company, after Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Micrsoft’s Satya Nadella, to visit India recently. Microsoft founder Bill Gates also was in India and met with Modi but it was in connection with his philanthropic projects in the country.
Zuckerberg is also expected to meet with Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad as well as someother ministers, who had also met Sandberg when she visited.
with PTI inputs