Meta's Sandhya Devanathan sees India as key market for growth

India plays a crucial role in Meta's global strategy, serving as a major user base and a testing ground for new products, according to Sandhya Devanathan, Meta's head in India. Devanathan, in an interview to ToI, highlighted India's significant contribution to the company's growth and its position as a leading market for platforms like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and the recently launched Threads.

India has over 200 million Threads downloads, making it one of the largest markets globally. The country also shows strong adoption of newer products like the AI platform Llama, and is among the top three global markets for the open-source large language AI model, also called Llama.

Meta often uses India as a starting point for new products and features. Instagram Reels, launched in India in 2020, became a global success. WhatsApp Business Payments also debuted in India. Currently, Meta is piloting a small business calling feature on WhatsApp within the chat interface, also developed with an "India first" approach.


Devanathan emphasized India's importance in Meta's product development process: “I and the team remain proud of this - how we make India the centre of where we innovate, where we build products and then take them global, all because we have that scale here.”

This “India first” approach extends to AI development. Indian developers are using Llama to build solutions and tools, contributing significantly to the platform's global growth. Devanathan sees India playing a critical role in the adoption, usage, and development of Llama.

While acknowledging regulatory challenges, Devanathan expressed Meta's openness to progressive regulation, citing the Digital Personal Data Protection Act as a positive example.

(with ToI inputs)