I'm Excited About The Role India Will Play In Building Metaverse: Mark Zuckerberg At the second Fuel for India event, Zuckerberg spoke about how a huge amount of the Metaverse foundation will get built here

"I am really excited about the role that India will play in building this future. India's talent pool -- the engineers, developers and creators, and your whole vibrant start-up ecosystem are playing a huge role in shaping the future...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," said Mark Zuckerberg at the second Fuel for India event by Meta (formerly Facebook).

He added that 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 believes that the metaverse is going to be the successor to the mobile internet. "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 said at the event.

Developer Ecosystem

Zuckerberg's speech conveyed that he bets high on India's developer ecosystem. He believes that India is the developer ecosystem, the ecosystem of individual entrepreneurs and the spirit around that is one of the things that makes India so special. "That is why I think we're going to see a huge amount of the foundation get built here in India," he said.

The company is also investing in other growing areas like education (Unacademy) and commerce (Meesho), which it considers are important use cases for the future that it 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. 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're going to need to empower millions of creators around the world. And that's what we're so excited about seeing here," he said.

Tech Innovation In India

Zuckerberg also expressed that the reason why India is so exciting to him is two things that combined together make for something special -- 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," he said.

"When we're thinking about what the next generation is going to look like in terms of where these creators and developers are going to come from who are going to build the foundation of the metaverse - I think it's obvious India is going to be a huge part of that. We want to make sure that we can do our part to continue unlocking this [India's] potential. Because I think the experiences that people build here are going to make people's lives better all around the world," he said.