Facebook India on Monday announced that it was expanding its investments in small business across the country with a series of Small Business Boost events, in tune with Government’s ‘Digital India’ and ‘Skills India’ policies.
The social media major stated this at the first such event that was kicked off here by Telangana’s IT Minister K.T. Rama Rao, who asked the Facebook to leverage the full potential of the social media to improve the lot of the poor by helping them advance their livelihoods. “Traditional media’s outreach is now being challenged by social media and we have to accept this fact,” he said.
“I am told that there are 125 million followers of Facebook in India and I don’t think anyone else can beat that number. We need to harness the power of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Digital India’. Telangana Chief Minister has a Facebook page that has a whopping 2.75 lakh followers and still counting every minute, hour and day. No other CM in India has that kind of following,” the IT Minister said.
8,500 Village pages
“We in the Government of Telangana are extensively leveraging Facebook to the maximum extent. All our Ministers and departments are regularly posting details of developmental programmes and ongoing works,” Mr. Rama Rao continued. He added that Government would launch Facebook pages for 750 villages this Gandhi Jayanthi (October 2) and in a phased manner, go on to cover about 8,500 villages.
Facebook India’s Director-Public Policy Ankhi Das said that they launched the first of such events here in Hyderabad because the City of Pearls was what they could call ‘home’, having opened their first facility and made their first big investment. “We are committed to make people understand the power of Facebook and we are focussed on expanding into the rural areas too, where there is enormous potential,” she said.
14 times a day
The company’s Head of Economic Growth in India, Ritesh Mehta took the 1,000-odd delegates at the event through an hour-long session where he explained how they could leverage the power of social media, how they could open a page, post content, promote their businesses and even measure the impact. “On an average, a user opened his account 14 times a day and checks his/her News Feed,” he pointed out.
