FB bets on India in 2nd coming for Sandberg

NEW DELHI: It is a second coming in India for her. And what a contrast this one is.

Sheryl Sandberg, then barely 22, arrived in India in 1991 fresh off the Harvard oven to the heat of Madhya Pradesh to work as a greenhorn economist at the World Bank.

At 44, she is here again after a long gap, this time as the chief operating officer of the world’s favourite digital haunt, Facebook, which is betting on India as the second biggest market outside of its birthplace, the US. With 100 million users already in place and a mobile revolution happening to multiply it, optimism on revenues is high.

“This is like a long full circle for me to the place where my career started,” said Sandberg.

“There is such a huge opportunity here,” she gushed at a media round-table, where she quickly abandoned the high seat of the table so she could huddle in the middle in a bright magenta dress with a matching dupatta.

Facebook has pages for 900,000 small businesses from India and plans to convert as many of them as possible to advertisers.

Asked if she remembered the World Bank’s country head in India in her youth, she shoots back: “I was way too low in the pay-grade for that then.”

Never mind. Forbes ranked her net worth on Wednesday at $1 billion in its billionaire ranking.