Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that he is excited about the role that India will play in building the Metaverse future. He added that India’s talent pool including the engineers, developers and creators, and the whole vibrant start-up ecosystem are playing a huge role in shaping the future.
While speaking to Vishal Shah, Vice President of Meta at the second edition of Fuel for India 2021, Zuckerberg also added that 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.
Zuckerberg also stated that Meta is also investing in other growing areas like education and commerce through investments in Unacademy and Meesho, which are important use cases as they think about the future that Meta is building.
“We want to continue to partner in all of these areas as we accelerate the development of the fundamental technologies, the social platforms and creative tools that are going to be necessary to bring the metaverse to life,” Zuckerberg added.
He further stated, “In order for the metaverse to work, this isn’t going to get built by any one company or even a small number of companies – we need to empower millions of creators around the world. The ecosystem of individual entrepreneurs, the spirit around that is one of the things that makes India so special and we are going to see a huge amount of the foundation get built here in India.”
While speaking on what makes India an exciting place for tech innovation, Zuckerberg said, “The reason why India is so exciting to me is the combination of two things – the entrepreneurial spirit combined with the scale of what can happen. This is what is fuelling a lot of the internet economy in India already, but this is what makes me so optimistic about the future.”
“I think that the metaverse is going to be the successor to the mobile internet,” Zuckerberg said while speaking on Meta’s vision for the metaverse.
“It’s this immersive internet or embodied 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 added.
