Facebook is all set to invest in technology start-ups in India

On Friday, a top official of Facebook said that the social media giant is planning to invest in technology start-ups in India.

India Vice President and Managing Director – Facebook, Ajit Mohan said the company is gearing up to make direct investments in technology start-ups in India.

While addressing “Huddle Kerala 2019” start-up meet, Mohan said, “We are willing to spend our time and energy to tap the massive depth of engineering talent in the country.”

He also stated that “A couple of months ago, we announced the first minority investment that Facebook has done anywhere in the world in a company called Meesho”.

He added, “What Meesho does is it relies on the existing behaviour of communities in India and leverages on women entrepreneurs essentially pitching products to their friends and families.”

He stated that their model has the potential to bring 2,00,000 first-time female entrepreneurs online. “It is an innovation that was coming out of India, which can be exported to the rest of the world, and that model has scaled a dramatic impact in job creation. Any analysis of the economy, most of the job creation happens from small business.”

Joint Secretary of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) stated that other states could follow how Kerala built start-up culture.

He said, “Around 1.95 start-ups are getting registered every hour in the country. In the next month, it may be two start-ups per hour. We have 22,895 registered start-ups in the country as per the records till September. Around 45 per cent of start-ups has come from tier-2 and tier-3 cities.

About 9 to 10 per cent of start-ups have women as founders, and we have to promote women entrepreneurs.”

Since 2010, India has witnessed a significant rise in the technology start-ups in India. Since 2014, India has seen rapid evolution of start-up landscape making Indian technology start-ups stand 4th largest in the world.

With the excellent support of the government, the start-up ecosystem is continuously growing. With the funding and aid of companies like Facebook, young graduates can involve in the experiments to incubate and nurture their start-ups without worrying about the capital.