Facebook founder to visit India this month

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks to students during an special assembly at Sequoia High School in Redwood City, Calif. on Thursday, Sept. 18, 2014. Zuckerberg participated in the assembly as part of Facebook's campaign to encourage students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math or what are otherwise known as STEM fields. (AP Photo/Alex Washburn)

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg will be visiting India this month, and is most likely to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who himself is an avid user of the social networking site.

Mr. Zuckerberg, the second high-profile executive from Facebook to visit India after Sheryl Sandberg, will be in India to address the first Internet.org summit taking place on October 9-10 here.

Facebook had last year announced the launch of Internet.org, a global partnership with six other technology giants- Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung. The project aims to make Internet access available to the next five billion people who are not online yet.

He is expected to discuss with the Prime Minister ways in which the government and the social networking giant can collaborate on

>Internet.org .

One of the youngest billionaires in the world, Mr. Zuckerberg is expected to meet other senior ministers as well.

Mr. Zuckerberg’s visit to India, the second biggest market for the social networking giant, will mark the third visit by high-profile CEO of U.S.-based corporations to the country in a fortnight, after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

In July, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Ms. Sandberg had visited India. In a meeting with Mr. Modi, the two had discussed ways to make social networking platforms useful for e-governance as well as bettering interactions between the government and citizens.