Back in April 2014 at its F8 conference, Social Networking giant, Facebook launched FbStart, a program to provide free tools and services to startups to give a boost to the startup ecosystem. Since the launch, benefits worth $50 million to developers has been distributed in Asia Pacific and in that more than $20 million has gone to startups in India echoing the positive and thriving startup ecosystem in the country.
The FbStart World Tour is part of the outreach event series spanning 20 cities across the globe to meet mobile developers and engage with them. The Asian leg of the event has stops at Hon Kong, Seoul, Taipei, Bangalore and Gurgaon.
At an media event at Bangalore, Facebook Director Product Platform Partnerships, Ime Archibong shared insights of the FbStart program and how India figures high on the list.
The FbStart focusses on two tracks: 1) Bootstrap, for early stage mobile startups with recently launched apps, and 2) Accelerate, for established mobile apps that have demonstrated a sustained level of growth in their target markets. The benefits include over $30,000 and $80,000 respectively. Another valuable aspect for the startups would be the mentorship from Industry veterans and the community to reach out for any guidance in their respective fields.
More than 70 percent of Facebook developers are now located outside the US and in Asia alone there are more than 1000 members in the FbStart program. Significantly, Indian developers are more actively building apps with Facebook than any other country outside the U.S, with more than 75 percent of top-grossing apps in India having Facebook integration.
Ime Archibong also shared some of the apps in India that has been part of the FbStart program and seeing some good traction in the app world. It includes Delhi-based Cardback, a payment recommendation platform that helps cardholders and wallet user identify the best offers and rewards for the various cards and help the user spend on their cards diligently and save for every transaction they make. Cardback has seen significant surge in app installation after using the Facebook ad credits, Facebook login. Apart from the other tools and service at their disposal as part of the FbStar program, the Facebook App analytics also helps app developers like Cardback to get a better insight on their customers and make engagements with the users better.
Samosa, a Hyderabad based app is another significant developer to have benefited out of FbStart, it offers curated collection of clips from popular movies that people can share with their friends. With Parse powered backend, the Android first app maker has made easy transitions to other iterations. Samosa also uses Facebook login to sign and also share the clips directly with the contacts in the Messenger.
To learn more on FbStart, visit FbStart.
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