Agencies/New Delhi

Facebook chief executive and founder Mark Zuckerberg said yesterday he believes India will be crucial to getting “the next billion online” and helping to alleviate poverty.
Speaking to about 900 students at New Delhi’s Indian Institute of Technology, Zuckerberg said broadening Internet access was vital to economic development in a country where a billion people are still not online.
“If you really have a mission of connecting every person in the world you can’t do that without connecting people in India,” Zuckerberg, dressed in a grey T-shirt and dark jeans, told the audience.
“We have the second biggest community in India and we want the next billion to come online,” he said, adding that Internet access helps create jobs and lift people out of poverty.
“India is one of those countries which you cannot overlook if you want to connect the world,” he said.
India is Facebook’s second biggest market after the US, with about 130mn of its 1.5bn worldwide users, making it critically important for the site which is banned in China.
The 31-year-old billionaire gave lighthearted answers to questions including “Why do I get so many requests for (online game) Candy Crush?” and “If you could have a supernatural power what would you wish for?”
But he also vigorously defended Facebook’s controversial Internet.org project, which provides free access to the Internet, mainly in poor rural communities, in 24 countries including India.
The Internet.org initiative, rebranded as Free Basics, aims to provide select websites and apps for free.
It has been criticised by Net neutrality advocates in India, who allege that Facebook aims to woo users with the offer of free access and later trapping them to pay for future paid services.
“We have a moral responsibility to look out for people who do not have the Internet... and make sure the rules don’t get twisted to hurt people who don’t have a voice,” Zuckerberg said, adding that the programme had brought a million Indians online.  
Facebook is also exploring new ways to increase access in hard-to-reach areas, he said, such as solar-powered planes to “beam down connectivity” and data-light apps that work on slow 2G networks.
Zuckerberg also reiterated his commitment to India by clarifying his plans of opening schools here.
“We have opened schools in Africa with Internet capable infrastructure to give a boost to education quality and we are evaluating plans to open such schools in India in the future,” he said.
He also hinted at improving Facebook for physically-challenged people. “We are working on artificial intelligence in order to improve computer systems to better understand humans.”
“In the next five to ten years, Facebook might be able to read timelines, picture messages and picture captions for the physically-challenged users,” he said.
“This will also help Facebook connect more people boosting the network. We are also working on geo-location strategies to identify which users are in which area and in case of a calamity whether they would be likely affected or not,” Zuckerberg said giving the example of the social media platform’s success with the ‘safe’ notification during the Nepal and the Afghanistan quake that sent tremors through Delhi.
Zuckerberg also said he was working on a project named Amber to help locate missing persons.
“Although the programme is currently running in the US and Canada, we intend to get it running in every country soon. It is a serious responsibility as we are the platform that connects millions of people together,” Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg’s trip came after a weekend visit to Tsinghua university in Beijing where he delivered a 20-minute speech in Mandarin, a language he has been studying since 2010.
He met India’s tech-savvy Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month when the premier toured Facebook on a visit to Silicon Valley, advocating the political power of social media.