Mark Zuckerberg’s Innovation challenge in India

Mark Zuckerberg i.e. the CEO of Facebook visited India for the First Time to start a innovation challenge and is on a mission to get more and more Indians online. In his keynote address, Zuckerberg talked about how he plans to get millions of Indians online. Due to the lack of Internet connectivity and challenges related to affordability of services, he realises that Facebook needs to do much more than what it is today. He also announced that India is the second country in the world having Facebook Account after US.

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What is Innovation challenge  ?

The CEO, announced a million dollar fund to start an “Internet.org” innovation challenge in India. The fund will be made available to developers of applications, websites and online services that improve lives of women, students, farmers and migrant workers. ‘Internet.Org’ aims to make Internet access affordable for people across the globe.

Speaking at the summit, Zuckerberg also highlighted a few interesting facts: “25 per cent fewer women are connected compared to men; 80 per cent of content on the Internet are just in 10 languages, while there are 22 official languages in India; 65 per cent of people use Facebook in a language other than English, including 10 Indian languages.

“We will be presenting four $250,000 USD Innovation Challenge Award prizes: one to the leading app, website or service or idea that best meets the needs of each of the designated population categories. Two $25,000 USD Impact Award prizes will also be granted in each category,” .Winners will be announced at Mobile World Congress in March 2015, and interested individuals, organisations and groups can submit applications through January 31, 2015.

Zuckerberg’s Interaction with Media..!!

  • He is excited about Prime Minister’s Digital India mission. He want to figure out how they can plug into this mission. Facebook is the biggest Internet service worldwide, and there are unique things where they can help out.
  • People need different things. Internet is an enabler of lot of things. People use Internet for health information, news and weather. People do not need any one thing alone. The team of Facebook are focused on Internet because they understand the dynamics well. They never say Internet is important than food or water. We need both. But they, as Facebook, are better suited to provide Internet than food or water.
  • He added- “One of the things we are doing is to enable local language. India has great diversity of local language. We now support 10 popular languages. We have more work to do there.”
  • Mr. Zuckerberg is also interested in bringing a whole host of initiatives into India including a scheme that will offer basic Internet services free of cost in collaboration with telecom operators and handset makers. This will allow people to browse selected health, employment and local information websites without data charges.

Source:- The Hindu

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