Meta has built its first stand alone office in Asia, located in India to scale its operations in the country. The renovated space comprises a square feet of 130,000 seated in Gurugram, promising to host the Center for Fuelling India’s New Economy (C-FINE).

The building will brew efforts in training as well as skilling the country’s business owners, creators, entrepreneurs and local communities. On that accord, it has set a goal of training one crore small business and 2,50,000 creators for the next three years.

Additionally, the office will project the impact of new technologies on the digital ecosystem of the country. For the execution of this plan, it plans to set up an area specifically for demonstrating how technologies like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) could be transformative for sectors namely learning, education, commerce and healthcare.

“We see this office as an opportunity for us to build a space that will house our largest team in the country”, adds Ajit Mohan, Vice-President and Managing Director, Facebook India (Meta).

Community impact programs will also be conducted pertaining to important concepts around safety training for women and children.

“We see this office as a reaffirmation of our commitment to the country, our deep aspiration to be an ally for a country that is rapidly transforming and where technology will play an enabling role in enhancing lives and prosperity of future generations”, says Mohan.

Inaugurating the new Meta office, Union Minister of State for IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar comments that, “it is clear that technology is deeply and reversibly changing the trajectory of our country. In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi set up very simple and clear goals on how technology will be deployed in this country. He said it must transform the lives of every Indian, it must expand opportunities and the digital economy of the country”.

“The office will be open to anyone who is driving change - be it creators, small business owners, entrepreneurs, artists or community leaders”, affirms Mohan.

Meta has already discussed setting up retail stores all over the globe and these stores will consist of devices like VR headsets and eventually even AR smart glasses that are manufactured by the social media giant, from its Reality Labs division in particular.

These devices will be a gateway to the Metaverse, a goal that Meta has been breaking sweat for years, as it plans to enable people to move from virtual to augmented reality versions almost seamlessly. Hence, the very reason why it changed its name.

The sole goal of these stores are to make the world more open and connected, as they spark emotions such as curiosity, added with a sense of welcome, while experimenting with headsets in a judgement free journey.