Facebook launches ‘FB Start’ in India to help mobile startups

A completely new program “FB Start” has been designed and launched in India by Facebook especially to help early stage mobile startups.

This program provides startups which includes $80,000 worth of free tools and services. One can also take the benefit of exclusive community access and worldwide events.

Facebook’s director of strategic partnerships, Ime Archibong mentioned that Fb has distributed $50 million benefits in total to Asia Pacific startups, out of which, more than $21 million were distributed to startups in India.

He also admitted that India is a very critical market for Facebook as it has the largest base of developers working on this platform outside US. There are around 125 million monthly active users of FB in India which makes it the second largest market.

Ime Archibong also stated that they have plans to get people in India and around the world connected to each other through internet.org.

It will also give the opportunity to mobile developers to help people have great first experience with the internet. Ime didn’t specify about the number of members of FB start program in India, but he said that more than 1,000 members are from Asia Pacific region.

Earlier in May, Fb had mentioned that there were more than 3,800 members in FB start program in India and also it ranked among top five member countries. Delhi based Cardback and Hyderabad based Samosa are two of its members.

Recently, FB conducted FB start programs in many countries including London, New York, Mexico city, Hong Kong, Seoul, Taipei and India.