Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is on a two-day visit to India, the second biggest market for the social networking giant, addressed the first Internet.org summit on October 9 in New Delhi.
Addressing the summit, Zuckergberg said that more than one billion people don’t have the Internet access in India and added that, he would be meeting the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday and would discuss how Indian villages could get access to the Internet.
Indicating what stops most of the users in India to access the Internet, Zuckerberg said, “Lack of relevant local language content is why most Indians don’t use the Internet”. This is what keeps the Internet restricted to a limited section of the society. To fill the gap, Facebook is working in rural India to improve Internet connectivity.
Emphasising the need of the Internet, Zuckberg said, when people are connected, accomplishments are easy; connected people have better access to technology, education and jobs.
Speaking at the summmit, Zuckerberg also highlighted a few interesting facts: 25 per cent fewer women are connected compared to men; 80 per cent of content on the Internet are just in 10 languages, while there are 22 official languages in India; 65 per cent of people use Facebook in a language other than English, including 10 Indian languages.
Zuckerberg is the third high profile CEO of a US-based corporation, after Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Micrsoft’s Satya Nadella, to visit India in last few days.
