Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg Meets Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi

On his maiden trip to India, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg on Friday called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss digital expansion in the country.

Mr. Zuckerberg, who arrived here on Thursday, met Mr. Modi in the evening but neither the Prime Minister's Office nor Facebook disclosed details of the meeting.

Earlier in the day, he met Telecom and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

Mr. Zuckerberg is the third high profile CEO of a U.S.-based firm, after Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Microsoft's Satya Nadella, to visit India in the last few days.

While addressing the media on Thursday, , Mr. Zuckerberg said he wanted to discuss the role Facebook could play in connecting villages and understand Mr. Modi's Digital India vision.

"One of the things I am really excited about is that the PM has this whole Digital India initiative. We can't create connectivity around the world just by ourselves, we are trying to work with operators, governments."

"I am mostly interested in hearing and learning about how we can help. I believe there are certain things that Facebook can uniquely bring," he said.

Mr. Zuckerberg said while India had about 243 million Internet users and 100 million plus Facebook users, there were over a billion people in the country who did not have access to the Net.

PTI