Facebook targets a billion users in India, but it's a long road ahead

Facebook has over a billion users worldwide, but its big ambition is to bring the next 5 billion online, and using the world’s largest social network. On the way it also wants to create the next big platform - virtual reality - and also wants to own modern multimedia communication pipelines - WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger - while bringing Internet to remote places through drones and the likes.

But after announcing over 100 million users in India, Facebook is eyeing over a billion users from the country. In an interview to The Economic Times Facebook’s Javier Olivan, VP, Growth and Analytics, said that that would be a totally different challenge for the company. Having already grown by nearly six times in terms of users in India (from 17 million to 100 million) last year, Facebook has taken great strides forward, but the next stage would require a bigger jump and more cunning strategising. For example, just by opening up access to Facebook on feature phones for free, Facebook has got a great spike in users from India. But the next level will have to do with smartphones and getting Facebook behind as many apps as possible. The company is working on expanding its standalone app portfolio.

Facebook’s Messenger app is hugely popular in India, featured higher on the Windows Phone store than the Facebook app itself. But Facebook still has a long way to go before fully featuring as a powerful smartphone app developer. hile its initiatives have helped gain feature phone users, smartphones are all about apps. The usage of web browser on a smartphone is dropping drastically, so already Facebook is seeing less traction from mobile web.

With Facebook being just another app on your phone, it has to compete with others that fulfil a particular niche brilliantly, because their focus is so narrowed down. New articles are best read on news aggregation apps; photo sharing is best on Instagram, but if you want to keep it private, you have Snapchat. Messenger is competing with WhatsApp, which in turn has a host of rivals from WeChat to Hike to Line to Kik. For games, you have actual games on smartphones and none of that Farmville nonsense. On mobile platforms, Facebook faces competition from all corners in the battle for your attention. So how exactly does it plan to keep Indians hooked?

That, unfortunately, has not been outlined. Secondly per user revenue from India is a fraction of that from countries with far lesser users, but Facebook is hoping that marketers and advertisers will start seeing the platform in a more serious light now that it has breached the 100 million mark.  Jessie Paul, CEO of Paul Writer Strategic Advisory, told Economic Times in the same article that “Facebook is a desktop story. It was not created for mobile first and that’s where new internet users are. Facebook for mobile is not as cool as on the desktop.”

So will India keep embracing Facebook or will newer, more niche apps fill the gap just as well? Facebook is feeling bullish about India, but its future will be decided primarily by what it does to stay relevant in the smartphone age.