Excited about India's role in metaverse, says Mark Zuckerberg

Meta (formerly Facebook) founder Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday said India’s entrepreneurial spirit and massive scale is fuelling optimism about the future and the opportunities that the country presents.

Speaking at Meta’s Fuel for India 2021, Zuckerberg also said he is excited about the role that India will play in building the metaverse.

Metaverse refers to a combination of multiple technologies, including virtual reality, augmented reality and video where users “live” within a digital universe.

“The reason why India is so exciting to me is two things that combined together make for something special — the entrepreneurial spirit combined with the scale of what can happen. That is what is fuelling a lot of the internet economy in India already, but it also makes me so optimistic about the future here,” he said.

He added that India’s talent pool — the engineers, developers and creators, and the vibrant start-up ecosystem — are playing a huge role in shaping the future. “India is on track to have the largest app developer base in the world by 2024, and already has one of the largest Spark AR developer communities.

“The online gaming sector in India has seen a lot of growth over the past few years and our investment in gaming in the country keeps growing as we look at how it's going to take shape in the metaverse,” he said.

Talking about the company’s vision of metaverse, Zuckerberg said metaverse is going to be the successor to the mobile internet. “It’s this immersive internet where you're in it rather than seeing it... This is going to be an internet where you feel like you're there and you're present with people and in other places. And, I think it's this continuation of the technological trends that we've seen over the last few decades,” he said.