Facebook launched FbStart in April of 2014 to help startups take off by offering them developer tools and services for free. The company partnered with a number of third-party service providers to do so.
Facebook has given periodic updates on the program in the meantime, and just gave the latest one talking up its impact on Asia Pacific developers.
“FbStart, Facebook’s program for early stage mobile developers, has now distributed benefits worth more than $50 million to Asia Pacific startups, $20 million of which went to startups in India, Facebook’s largest developer community outside the U.S.,” a spokesperson for Facebook tells WebProNews.
This year, Facebook launched its FbStart World Tour across 20 cities where it has been meeting with developers. Events have been held in London, New York, and Mexico City, and most recently in Hong Kong, Seoul, Taipei, Bangalore, and Gurgaon.
There are over 1,000 FbStart members in Asia, which have apps like Coursell (a lifestyle marketplace app), Cardback (a card management/wallet app), and Samosa (a movie clip app), which the company highlights in a blog post.
“Through FbStart, Carousell’s team was able to run and test marketing campaigns with their Facebook Mobile App Ad credit,” Facebook says. “The quality of users acquired and cost targets have exceeded expectations with the help of Lookalikes from Custom Audiences of their top buyers and sellers. They also used FbStart’s partner benefits, including Transifex to scale to multiple countries and languages and Mobile Action to improve their app store optimization. Additionally, Carousell uses Facebook Platform products such as Facebook Login, Social Plugins, and Facebook Analytics for Apps.”
Cardback has also made great use of ad credit as well as Facebook Login and Facebook Analytics for Apps. Samosa was able to capitalize on Parse to power its backend to help it quickly iterate on its app.
Image via Facebook