New Delhi:
Facebook has launched its service ‘Facebook at Work’ – a service for professional accounts in India. The new service will allow employees of an organisation to collaborate and connect with co-workers.
A number of firms including L&T Infotech, Telenor, RBS, YES Bank, Godrej Industries, Paytm, Zomato have come forward in the beta stage of the application.
Similar to Facebook, the enterprise offering allows users to connect with their colleagues, see newsfeed, comment and share posts, create groups and chat using Work Chat.
However, users cannot use their personal accounts to log in and the access is managed by the organisation. So, if an employee leaves an organisation, the login ceases to work and hence, the corporate data stay safe.
Facebook at Work also has no ads or games. The US-based company charges a fee based on number of monthly active users.
“At Facebook, our mission is to make the world more open and connected, and this is also true in the workplace. In a mobile-first world, we want to help people find simpler ways to collaborate and connect with co-workers,” Facebook at Work Director Julien Codorniou told reporters here.
Facebook at Work is not a social networking solution, but a productivity solution, he added.
“Over 60,000 companies globally signed up globally for the pilot. Of these, we have already got 450 companies on board. These include different sectors from banking, telecom, travel, retail and real estate,” Facebook at Work Asia-Pacific Head Ramesh Gopalkrishna said.
He added that several companies in India like L&T Infotech, YES Bank, Godrej Industries, Zomato as well as start-ups like Delhivery, Practo and Paytm have started using Facebook at Work with employees as well.
Gopalkrishna, however, declined to comment on the number of users for Facebook at Work.
“India is one of Facebook at Work’s top countries and our teams will start testing the solution with more companies... Facebook is focussing on adding companies with 5,000-10,000 employees before opening the platform,” he added. Of Facebook’s over 1.62 billion global users, over 142 million come from India.
