Facebook to open Hyderabad office

Facebook is the latest high profile company to make a base for itself in the city of Hyderabad in south India

A number of large internet corporations already have a presence in the city, including Google and Microsoft, who make use of the lower costs in India when employing programmers and customer service staff.

Facebook is currently one of the most visited websites on the internet and around 8million of its 400million users are based in India. The largest user base is in the US, but around 70 per cent of users are from elsewhere.

The Hyderabad office joins Palo Alto and Austin in the States and Dublin in Ireland as a centre of Facebook operations. The company’s director of global online operations, Don Faul, says this is vital so that a service can be offered 24 hours a day to serve all the time zones of the world.

The initial team that will be employed in Hyderabad will be relatively small, but fairly rapid expansion is envisaged. Facebook now makes enough money to cover its running costs and has achieved this well ahead of schedule, paving the way for further growth.