India's talent pool playing a huge role in shaping the future of internet: Mark Zuckerberg

India's talent pool of engineers, developers and creators as well as its vibrant startup ecosystem, which are playing a huge role in shaping the future of the internet economy, would also be key to building the foundation of the metaverse, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the company's Fuel For India 2021 event on December 15.

"When we are thinking about what the next generation (of the Internet) is going to look like, and where the creators and developers are going to come from, I think it is obvious that India is going to be a huge part of that. The experiences that people build here are going to make people's lives better all around the world" Zuckerberg said during a discussion with Vishal Shah, the firm's head of Metaverse products at the annual flagship event.

"India is the biggest country in the world that already uses the social media services that we use, on Facebook and WhatsApp, for sure, and Instagram is growing incredibly quickly. We just want to make sure that we can basically do our part to continue unlocking this potential" he said.

Also read: India could play a key role in shaping our metaverse efforts: Meta's Vishal Shah

Zuckerberg noted that India is on track to have the largest app developer base in the world by 2024 and already has the largest Spark AR (Augmented Reality) developer communities.

"The online gaming sector 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 is going to take shape in the metaverse," Zuckerberg said.

He also talked about the company's efforts in investing in growth areas such as education and commerce, which said were important use cases "as we think about the future that we are building".

Meta has backed startups such as edtech firm Unacademy and social commerce company Meesho in the country.

"We want to continue to partner in all of these areas as we accelerate the development of the fundamental technologies, social platforms, and creative tools that are going to be necessary to bring the metaverse to life," Zuckerberg said.

Also read: Jio on WhatsApp will bring consumers convenience like never before: Isha and Akash Ambani

As part of this initiative, Meta will be expanding its partnership with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to provide a curriculum on digital safety and online well-being and AR for over 10 million students and 1 million educators in India, enabling them to embrace immersive technologies over the next three years.

Meta and CBSE would also collaborate on content curation and development of curriculum integrating immersive technologies, AR and virtual reality (VR) by introducing these as skills subjects for students, the company said.

"I'm really excited about this partnership and I think it's a huge opportunity to [invest in] this entrepreneurial spirit and bring some of these tools around the metaverse, (AR), and training to the education system here in India," Zuckerberg said.

The Meta CEO has been one of the biggest proponents of the metaverse, so much so that the social media firm changed its corporate name to Meta and plans to spend at least $10 billion in building this platform which he says will take years to materialize.

"I think that the metaverse is going to shape almost everything that we do on the internet today. If we were starting the company today, rather than starting by building a social network, I think we would start by building immersive experiences for people to feel present in the metaverse" Zuckerberg said.

Also read: Explainer | What does Facebook's metaverse look like?

Gaming, work collaboration, education and training, concerts, sports, and fitness would be among the big use cases for the metaverse.

"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 in India is the developer ecosystem, the ecosystem of individual entrepreneurs, the spirit around that is one of the things that makes India so special and is [why] I think we're going to see a huge amount of [the foundation] get built here in India" Zuckerberg said.

Elaborating on the company's vision on safety and privacy for metaverse, Zuckerberg said by setting out the vision early also provides them an opportunity to work with other companies in the industry, set open standards for how things should evolve and work with civil society and regulators and governments around the world on these standards.

"We can take lessons from that and build it from the beginning to the foundation of at least the parts of the technology that we're gonna build for the metaverse. I think setting that stable foundation from the beginning is going to be a really important thing" Zuckerberg said. "In retrospect, I wish that we had done this level of effort from the beginning when we were designing some of these social media apps."

Zuckerberg said the company was spending more than $5 billion a year in safety and security, with more than 40,000 people working on those programmes.

Also Read: Explainer | What is a Metaverse and why is everyone talking about it?