While social networking giant Facebook continues to face flak from the Indian government on user data breach issues, none of that has stopped it from preparing to reap profits from its millions of users in India. The American company has reportedly booked almost 2.2 Lakh sqft office space in namma Bengaluru. The site will be situated in Embassy GolfLinks, which is a campus that houses many tech companies including clients the likes of IBM, Microsoft, and Goldman Sachs.
Facebook is already working in the Indian tech capital from small offices located at Prestige Trade Towers and UB City. The company is planning to shift these teams to the new location. Operations will start from the new location from the next year. Also, Facebook will be recruiting around 2200 employees for this new site. Reportedly, Facebook will be spending up to a whopping USD 4.63 million or INR 34 crore in rent per year.
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The move will add Facebook to the club of big corporate organisations owning ginormous office spaces in Bengaluru, which currently include Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Google. With Facebook’s addition to the group, Bengaluru will have a FAAMG collection right in its front lawn. FAAMG is the name given by Goldman Sachs, an abbreviation coined for the five top-performing tech stocks in the market, namely, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet’s Google.
In 2010, Facebook launched its first office in India in Hyderabad. The team in Hyderabad works mainly with online advertising and developer support team, which also gives multilingual support to its users. Moreover, in 2017, Facebook had leased some 23,000 sqft of space from the Indian real estate company Parsvnath Developers in Central Delhi to develop office in the capital.
Considering Facebook’s Indian user base number touches almost 250 million, and, as Statista reveals, the networking giant is projected to touch a staggering 262 million users by 2022 in India, it is no wonder that the American company is prepping up its resources in Bengaluru, both in terms of office space and hiring.
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Also, let’s not forget Facebook’s chatting app WhatsApp, which also boasts of over 200 million Indian users and its upcoming payment app WhatsApp Pay, which is already poised to reach out to its already existing vast user base. All the more reasons for Facebook to cosy up in India.
The company recently appointed Ajit Mohan its new managing director and vice-president for India. Mohan served as the CEO for online video streaming service Hotstar and is poised to take charge from early 2019.
