Facebook has kicked its attempts in India up a notch with the announcement for adding support for eight Indian local languages to its feature mobile app, in a move to boost its demand with new demographics in the 1.2 billion populated nation. This facility for 8 local languages will be made available in phases over the next few weeks.
Kevin D’Souza, Facebook’s Country Growth Manager said in a statement “With over 50 million people in India on Facebook, we want to make sure that everyone has a great Facebook mobile experience regardless of the device that they choose to use”.
With this, Facebook users can access the site by using ‘Facebook for Every Phone mobile application’ in three national languages – Vietnamese, Hindi, and Malay and seven local Indian languages – Marathi, Malayalam, Tamil, Gujarati, Kannada, Bengali, and Punjabi.
Previously, users could access Facebook only in English. The Facebook phone app was launched in July 2011 and now supports more than 3600 Java-enabled phones across the world.
India is the 2nd largest market for Facebook after the United States. In March, the company said it is experiencing accelerated revenue growth in markets such as India and Brazil because of the rise in the number of users and increased sales efforts in Indian and Brazilian markets.
Facebook had 46 million monthly active users (MAUs) in India as of December 31, 2011, which was an increase of 132 percent from December 2010.
The company currently has over 350 million mobile users worldwide, the statement said.
