Modi debuts on Instagram, gets thousands of followers

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi Wednesday made his Instagram debut with a picture of the venue of the 25th ASEAN Summit here -- and notched up followers at a blistering pace.

After sharing his first post on the online mobile photo-sharing site, he tweeted: "Hello World! Great being on Instagram. My first photo... this one from the ASEAN Summit. @ Nay Pyi Taw... http://instagram.com/p/vSUOhVM_wX/".

He was welcomed on the site by his followers.

There were a staggering 40,000 followers by noon which kept on increasing by the second.

"Welcome to Instagram sir, wish you a great day," said one follower.

Another wrote: "Happy to see the world through your eyes."

The tech-savvy prime minister has 7.79 million followers on his Twitter account @narendramodi, and 3.43 million so far on the Prime Minister's Office account of @PMOIndia.

The prime minister has been quite active on other social sites like Stumbleupon, Pinterest, Tumblr and LinkedIn. He has been sharing photos on Flickr as well, said a statement from the Prime Minister's Office.

He has been making use of social media to showcase the work done by the government as well as inspire people to serve the nation through campaigns like the Swachch Bharat Mission.

"Social media has been helpful for spreading out messages directly from the PM and build a strong leadership. It has been successful in opening up a direct channel of communication between people and the PM," added the statement.

He will attend the 12th ASEAN-India Summit here Wednesday and also meet heads of state and government of several countries on the sidelines of the multilateral event.

He is on a three-nation tour to Myanmar, Australia and Fiji. He arrived on a two-day visit to Myanmar Nov 11.