To help small businesses in India reach the global economy, Facebook is planning to train five million people with digital skills in three years, a top company executive said on Saturday.
With ten ongoing programmes, Facebook has already trained one million people across 150 cities and 48,000 villages with support from 50 partners, the social networking giant said on the inaugural day of the two-day Facebook Community Boost programme aimed at helping small businesses gain digital marketing skills.
“We have a very strong framework of partnership with local partners and state governments,” Ankhi Das, Public Policy Director, India, South and Central Asia, told reporters here, adding that the company also works closely with the Ministry of Skill Development And Entrepreneurship on digital training.
“We are very excited that our programmes such as BoostYourBusiness, SheMeansBusiness, that are run in partnership with State and Central Government, civil society and private institutions, focus on facilitating economic transformation and mainstreaming of small businesses at the grassroots level into the formal economy,” she added.
The Facebook training programmes entail simple lessons that help to build a digital presence, avoiding expensive fees for creating and hosting websites, tap into the growing mobile economy, gain market access by learning to market their products to more than two billion people globally who use Facebook, increase awareness about their products and services.
The training programmes for India will also help people learn how to utilise Facebook-owned photo-sharing platform Instagram, Das said.
The training modules for these businesses in digital marketing and online safety developed by Facebook are available in 14 local languages.
Facebook said its programmes reached 29 states in India, including Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Punjab, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Odisha and Rajasthan among others.
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