Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg kicked off his India visit today with a startling stat: 69 percent of Indians have no clue how the internet can help them.
Zuckerberg shared this stark evidence of a digital divide during an address at the Internet.org Summit in New Delhi.
Internet.org was founded by Facebook, Samsung, and several other groups, with a mission to bring internet access to under-served regions and people. As part of this initiative, Zuckerberg today launched a US$1 million fund for apps in numerous Indian languages for farmers and various social services. Internet.org will conduct a contest to pick the apps to back.
“Facebook is focusing on content in local languages. It is crucial to internet penetration in Asia, especially India,” Zuckerberg said.
Facebook has over 100 million active users in India.
The Internet.org contest – called the Innovation Challenge – will have four prizes of a quarter of a million dollars each for apps or websites that serve farmers, women, students, and migrant workers. These are the categories of people in India found to be facing the biggest barriers to internet access. In addition to the four big prizes, there will be two US$25,000 ‘Impact Awards’ in each of the categories. The winners will be announced at the Mobile World Congress in March 2015. Applications can be sent through till January 31, 2015.
A recent study done by Facebook in collaboration with McKinsey found that although internet adoption is showing steady growth in India, the current penetration is only 15 percent. Globally, 4.4 billion people have no access to the internet, and 3.4 billion of those people live in 20 countries. A big proportion of the offline population is rural. Research shows that between 1.1 billion and 2.8 billion people are out of range of an existing mobile network.
In India, farmers have been among the biggest beneficiaries from the boom in low-cost smartphones, which give them vital weather and market data, as well as access to ecommerce. The Narendra Modi government has vowed to give a push to spreading the internet. That and initiatives like Facebook’s incentive for apps in local languages could do more to lift people out of poverty than any other social initiative. This might be top of the agenda when Zuckerberg and Indian Prime Minister Modi meet in New Delhi tomorrow.
See: India’s brick-and-mortar retailers doth protest too much over ecommerce
Zuckerberg launches $1 million Facebook fund for apps that help India’s poorest
