Chief Executive Officer of Face book Mark Zuckerberg met the Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad in New delhi today. The Minister welcomed Zuckerberg to India and congratulated for his innovation and achievements at a very young age. Zuckerberg congratulated the Minister for the great election victory and rekindling the hope and optimism of world business community in India. He placed on record that India is the top most priority for Facebook. Ravi Shankar Prasad shared the Prime Minister’s vision of Digital India with the Facebook team. He informed that Digital India is a revolutionary plan that would prove to be a game changer in ushering in a new era of development and empowerment of people. He further informed Mr. Zuckerberg about the success of MyGov platform and role that is playing in making governance participative. He told the Facebook team about the Prime Minister’s dream of “Government on Mobile”.
The Minister further explained that this approach of the government of India provides enormous opportunities for Facebook. There is a great opportunity for Facebook to harness the potentials in the fields of e-Commerce, e-Health, e-Education, sanitation and cleanliness drive and such other emerging areas. Zuckerberg expressed his keen interest in taking this forward and shared his idea of providing “free basic services” to the people as a part of their plan to make internet more affordable to people. Elaborating upon the success achieved in Zambia in providing free basic services to people, he requested the Government of India to support this initiative of Facebook in India. The Minister welcomed this idea and extended all possible support from the government in taking this forward.
Sharing his optimism towards the National Optical Fiber Network (NOFN) project, Mr. Zuckerberg expressed his interest in taking this forward. The Minister felt that there exists a great opportunity for Facebook to harness the vast potential of Indian entrepreneurs in retailing of internet connectivity to the masses by involving local entrepreneurs. Government would extend all cooperation to Facebook in this endeavor.