India among top bets for FB, monetisation in process: Sandberg

For Facebook, India is one of the biggest bets for future growth, said chief operating officer (COO) Sheryl Sandberg.

"No other country has the potential that India has," Sandberg said, adding that company has already started monetising in India where it has more than 100 million users of the 1.2 billion users globally. India, which is the second largest market in terms of users for Facebook, is set to overtake Facebook's home market over the next few quarters.

Putting India among the top priority markets for Facebook, Sandberg said that the California-based social media company has plans to look at setting up a research and development (R&D) facility in India in future. "We have started expanding our R&D slowly beyond the US. India is certainly a market we would look at. We have been investing in India and we are really willing to invest more because the returns are so great to our global and local business. We also want to develop this market, and I think that will happen as people go online," she said.

She said India's importance for Facebook's global technological advancement will continue to grow. Some of the developments, in terms of technology and application, including a lot of such things for 'Facebook for featurephones' was done here in India, or with this market in mind. "It then rolls out to other featurephone heavy markets. So we look to India to contribute to our global business," Sandberg said.

Facebook, Sandberg said, has already started monetising in India and the next is the growth phase for the company. "Our goal is to grow while connecting the world," she said. However, Facebook is not present in China, the world's largest population.

For Sandberg, who worked in India during the initial days of her career for a World Bank project in 1991, connecting the next billion Indians, among few more billions across the globe, is top of her agenda in the coming years. "India is a very promising market with very active Facebook users. Besides more users, Facebook, she says, wants to grow through partnerships with cellular operators, handset makers, brands, non-government organisations and the Government.

Like any other geography, Facebook is open to acquisitions in India if it's a strategic fit, irrespective of size, said Sandberg, who was the chief of staff for the US Treasury Department under President Bill Clinton and the vice-president for global online sales and operations at Google prior to joining Facebook. In January this year, Facebook had made its first acquisition in India by buying into Little Eye Labs, a Bangalore-based software product start-up, for an undisclosed amount.

Meanwhile, Sandberg expressed regret at the manner findings of the psychological experiment of Facebook, in 2012. "We communicated really badly on the study and we regret the way this got communicated. This was a one-week study a long time ago and it was like any product, testing different aspects of a product so that we can provide a better news feed experience and the communication on it, and how that was interpreted was horrible," Sandberg said, pointing out that Facebook, is not a company that produces content. "We're just trying to give you the best of what you see. None of this has a political point of view or is motivated."

Facebook, Sandberg said, privacy very seriously. "It is the hallmark of our service, it is the underpinning of our service," she said.

Sandberg, who has been meeting a lot of small and medium business enterprises (SMB) along with the large conglomerates, said there are about 900,000 SMBs on facebook in India while there are about 30 million globally. "For them, Facebook is the best platform to connect with potential customers, advertise. Some percentage of these SMBs are paying for the page product. This explains lot of growth here. Business here contributes globally," she said, adding that the company wants to 'enable commerce' - help small and medium businesses to find customers and expand their business, in turn helping Facebook grow.

"We want to ensure that access to Internet is faster, better and cheaper. We are making serious investments," Sandberg said, adding that Facebook's mission is to help people across the globe "connect and communicate".

In the financial year ended March 2013, Facebook's India unit had revenue of Rs 75.64 crore - a 68% jump from the previous year's Rs 45.06 crore, according to data by Registrar of Companies, Ministry of Corporate Affairs.