Facebook on Tuesday launched the ‘Grow Your Business Hub’ platform at the Grow Your Business summit, to help micro, small, and medium businesses to find relevant information, tools, and resources curated to cater to their business goals based on their growth journey. The social media giant is also looking at creating customised programmes depending on the stage of growth of the business providing them with relevant training and digital enablement.
Sandeep Bhushan, Director and Head, Global Marketing Solutions, Facebook India told BusinessLine,“Our tools are democratic and global and our support programmes are customised, in two-three cohorts. For instance, If you are just starting up, you get access to the boot camp which gives basic understanding of how to start a digital business, then you can opt for online learning guide. We then have the managed partners programme where we work with the partnering business for 90 days to manage and offer them the right tools and solutions to scale up business. We also have partnerships with the VCs in India, wherein their investing companies can come and work with us.”
Globally, more than 200 million businesses, mostly small businesses use Meta’s tools to connect with customers through its various apps including WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram. A significant share of this comes from India. For instance, there are more than 15 million WhatsApp for Business app users in India.
“Messaging is a core to how businesses work. A business can have basic CRM presence through WhatsApp. You can connect with your customers starting from a Facebook ad and redirecting to WhatsApp. Plus, adding payments to the product it further enhances WhatsApp for Business. Even banks are connecting with customers over WhatsApp for CRM purposes,” Bhushan said.
Businesses are increasingly able to have global reach through Facebook and Instagram, with more than 300 million people either liking or following an Indian small business page on Facebook. On Instagram, over the past three months, people in India have created more than 1.2 million posts and comments to show support for small businesses and buying local. The company said that more than 80% of surveyed SMBs reported that personalized ads targeting at even locality and pincode levels were important to the success of their business.
In addition to ‘Grow Your Business Hub’, the inaugural edition of the summit also saw the launch of ‘Grow Your Business Playbook’ that is aimed to inspire and equip early-stage businesses to start their journeys on Meta’s apps. The Playbook is Facebook India’s first published book on everything small businesses need to know from starting a business page, creating content on the page, to the first steps they need to take to start advertising.
These new resources come on the back of several initiatives and interventions that Facebook has launched in the recent months to support the growth of small businesses. In August, Facebook launched the ‘Small Business Loans Initiative’ partnering with fintech player Indifi to enable 5-minute business loans at 17-20 per cent annual interest rate. Facebook will continue to work with small business advertisers through third-party lenders.
