India Facebook Users Growing Fast, May Overtake Indonesia

We often hear this, but it’s true: “Indonesia is the second largest Facebook nation in the world.” Cool to know, but it might not be true much longer. India, the second most populous nation in the world, is loving Facebook and the number of users there is spreading like wildfire.

According to SocialBakers, India now has 32.6 million Facebook users, which puts it in third place worldwide, about 7 million short of Indonesia. The charts below show the user growth rate of each country and clearly, India is experiencing a surge while Indonesia’s growth is pretty much stagnant.

Well, it’s a numbers game, isn’t it? India has a population of 1.15 billion (60+ million internet users) while Indonesia has 230 million (20+ million internet users). So it is only normal that India will soon overtake Indonesia. I spoke to Pretham Venkky, Business Head at KRDS India, a Facebook marketing firm that works closely with Facebook India, to discuss Facebook’s rise in India. He credited Facebook India for making the social network service free on mobile phones with no data charges which he strongly believes is the key behind the country’s strong growth.

Venkky said that India gained 2.2 million additional Facebook users last month, and in contrast, Indonesia has only gained 32,000. This is just the beginning for the social network platform in India though. Its penetration rate is only at 2.78 percent and there is lots of room for growth. This growth comes will bring new opportunities and perhaps we will see many start-ups riding on the Facebook wave very soon.

Of course, the rise in Facebook’s popularity has attracted the attention of brands in India. Venkky told me that KRDS’s business in India has been very good so far. “We get plenty of requests for Facebook brand campaigns,” he said.

Besides business, Facebook is also used to fight corruption in India. An anti-corruption campaign started by several young Indian lads and fueled by figure head Anna Hazare has become a national inspiration. It couldn’t have happened without Facebook. You’ve gotta like it.