Banking on India’s talent pool to build AR-driven Metaverse: Mark Zuckerberg

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stressed that the company would heavily fall back on the talent pool in India, encompassing its entire start-up community, in its initiative towards building augmented reality-driven Metaverse experience for users.

“That is because India’s talent pool – the engineers, developers and creators and the whole vibrant startup ecosystem – is playing a huge role in shaping the future. India is on track to have the largest app developer base in the world by 2024. It already has one of the largest ‘Spark AR’ developer communities,” Zuckerberg was quoted as saying at the company’s ‘Fuel for India’ event on Wednesday (December 15).

Stressing that Metaverse would be the next big thing after the success of mobile internet, Zuckerberg said his company will continue investing in the online gaming segment, which has clicked quite well in India, while also assessing how “it’s going to take shape in Metaverse”.

The Facebook founder said that Meta is also investing in areas such as education and social commerce platforms like Unacademy and Meesho, which have shown a growth in the recent part, and promise to be a part of the future.

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Zuckerberg lauded the entrepreneurial spirit of the country and said that it is this power that has kept the internet economy running in India.

“When we’re thinking about what the next generation is going to look like in terms of, you know, where all these creators and developers are going to come from, who are going to really build the foundation of the Metaverse, I think it’s just obvious that India is going to be a huge part of that,” he said.

Facebook has the largest number of users, around 340 million, in India, while WhatsApp has around 400 million Indian users.