Letter to BS: Facebook's growing Indian user base an opportunity for M&M

Apropos “Mahindra wants to fund India’s rival to Facebook” (March 28); this is the kind of news that should warm the hearts of all Indians. This is real Make in India. These initiatives need wholehearted encouragement from the government. Anand Mahindra has always been very progressive, out-of-the-box thinker and an entrepreneur who has given the country many innovations and won several distinctions for his company as well as the country. Both in the automotive sector as well as technology, his group is already a leader. The fact that his colleague Jaspreet Bindra has picked up the gauntlet, gives us hope that the venture would go on to become a big success and a feather in his cap.

However, it is a big challenge. With Facebook’s user base at over 2 billion around the world — who log in every month — and India having the largest number of users and growing at the fastest rate — it is both a challenge and a great business opportunity for the Mahindra group. There will always be some Cambridge Anaylitica or the other; whether they will steal or buy data from Facebook is a moot point. But if we can really have our own, home grown, equally good social network, we can hope that many Indians would delete their account from Zuckerberg’s firm and switch to the new desi site.

Krishan Kalra Gurugram

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