The Facebook chief, who started her career more than three decades ago with a World Bank project in India, has serenaded the India growth story, saying the Asian country could become the world’s largest economy.
“India has the potential to become the largest economy in the world. And if you look at economic growth, particularly recently, jobs is a very hard situation all over the world. From the US to developing markets, everyone is very concerned about jobs,” says Facebook Chief Operating Officer (COO) Sheryl Sandberg.
“And majority of the growth, as I understand it, is certainly here, certainly in the US. In most countries, I have visited, SMBs are the way to growth,” Sandberg, who is visiting India, told PTI, an Indian news agency.
Making It: Small is Beautiful
Sandberg is banking on the burgeoning small and micro business enterprises (SMB) to drive India’s growth in years to come. “Individuals are creating businesses and employing other people, and in India, the SMB growth is strong. And Internet provides more growth stories to SMBs. People are connecting to people and getting more customers and that’s what leads to economic growth,” she said. The SMB sector is on a high growth trajectory in India and is estimated to contribute nearly eight per cent of India’s GDP, 45 per cent of the manufacturing output and 40 per cent of exports. The sector employs around 59 million people in 2.61 million enterprises across the country.
Sandberg, one of the world’s most powerful woman executives with net worth of $1 billion and the author of ‘Lean In: Women, Work, And The Will To Lead’, is expected to meet India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a robust proponent of using social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to create interactive and transparent governance in the world’s largest democracy. Modi’s tech-savvy election campaign expertly deployed social media platform to conjure up the portrait of a strong and decisive leader who can return the shine to the India Story. Facebook has already crossed 100 million average monthly users in India.
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