New Delhi: Meta has strengthened its commitment to the small businesses of India by launching the inaugural edition of the ‘Grow Your Business Summit’, an event focused on the growth agenda of the country’s small and medium businesses (SMB). The summit saw emerging and small businesses from distinct verticals, and from across the country, including small towns and rural India, attend the event and share their stories of how they transformed their business using digital technologies and apps by Meta. During the summit the company also announced the launch of ‘Grow Your Business Hub’, a one-stop destination for the micro, small, and medium businesses to find relevant information, tools, and resources curated to cater to their business goals based on their growth journey.
Every month millions of small businesses – 15 million just on WhatsApp in India – use the Meta apps every month to start their online journeys, and grow their business. Increasingly these businesses are able to have global reach because of Facebook and Instagram, with more than 300 million people either liking or following an Indian small business page on Facebook. On Instagram, over the past three months, people in India have created more than 1.2 million posts and comments to show their support for small businesses and buying local. More than half-a-million small businesses on Instagram in India have also listed either a WhatsApp number, or a phone number, or an email in their bio, or are encouraging potential customers to contact them directly via DM. This goes to show that increasingly small businesses are leveraging the Meta apps to go direct-to-consumer.
Said Archana Vohra, Director, Small & Medium Business, Facebook India, “Small businesses are the engines of growth for India’s economy, and the role of Meta is more important than ever in unlocking growth opportunities for them as many of them move online and use digital to grow. From curated and customized business skilling programs to launching initiatives that enable working capital for small businesses, we have been building for the growth of India’s SMBs with a localized, India-first approach. Keeping in mind the unique needs of small businesses at various stages of their growth journey, today we’re also announcing ‘Grow Your Business Hub’, a one-stop destination for small businesses to find resources curated to their goals.”
In addition to ‘Grow Your Business Hub’, the inaugural edition of the summit also saw the launch of ‘Grow Your Business Playbook’ that is geared to inspire and equip early stage businesses to start their journeys on our apps. The Playbook is Facebook India’s first published book on everything small businesses need to know from starting a business page, creating content on the page, to the first steps they need to take to start advertising. The playbook’s first edition is aimed at helping businesses set up offline to online journeys and accelerating online sales for small businesses during the COVID-19 era and beyond.
These new resources come on the back of several initiatives and interventions that Facebook has launched in the recent months to support the growth of small businesses. Most recently, Facebook launched the ‘Small Business Loans Initiative’ to enable business loans for Facebook’s small business advertisers through third-party lenders.
The India findings of a Facebook commissioned study by Deloitte “Dynamic Markets, Unlocking small business innovation and growth through the rise of the personalized economy” from May 2021 found that more than 80% small businesses in India claim Facebook apps were important to making their business stronger today and allowing them to compete in the market. More than 80% surveyed SMBs also reported that personalized ads were important to the success of their business, to effectively reaching new customers, and for achieving a higher return on marketing spend.
