With more and more Indian users joining Facebook every day, India is soon going to replace US to become the social networking giant’s number one market.
Addressing the 2013 Paley International Council Summit, in New York, Nathan Eagle, founder and chief executive of Jana, a US-based social marketing and global research firm, predicted that it will just take a couple of months for India to supplant the US to become Facebook’s largest user market base.
India, currently with 114.8 million Facebook users, is not too far behind the US which has a user base of 146.8 million. India’s Facebook user base is about 30 million users smaller than the US, but about 36.7 million new users are joining the social network every year which accounts for eight times the growth rate seen in the US where 5.2 million new Facebook users join annually. Facebook’s U.S. market seems to be completely saturated while the Indian market is still ready to embrace the social website’s network further.
Considering India’s future potential, Facebook launched its office in Hyderabad in 2010, which is its first office in Asia. The social networking giant’s Indian operations is increasing at a very fast pace with more than 500 employees providing round-the-clock and multilingual support to Facebook’s ever-increasing number of users, advertisers and third-party developers. Facebook has reportedly invested more than $150 million in the initial phases of its operations in India.
Earlier this month, Eagle forecasted that most of Facebook’s revenues would come from the emerging markets by 2015. Facebook’s third quarter results recorded a 60 percent hike to $2.016 billion as compared to last year’s third quarter.
