Facebook Messenger rolls out Messenger Lite app in India

Facebook has rolled out a ''lite'' version of its popular Messenger app in India to ensure connectivity in low-bandwidth situations.

The lightweight, fast and simple, Messenger Lite is aimed at markets with slow mobile internet connections. It is also ideal for people who use basic Android smartphones, as it uses up fewer resources.

According to a Facebook note, Messenger Lite offered almost all the basic functions as the full Messenger from texts, photos and links to emojis and stickers except that it was just under 10MB, which made it fast to install and quick to start up.

Since voice calling was gaining popularity over data in developing markets, Facebook had retained this feature with an ''active now'' indicator. Users would need to be able to use the app to manage groups. With the roll out in India, the country will be the largest market to get the new app.

Facebook had rolled out a lite version of the social network app too a couple of years ago which had become popular with users of budget Android phones, which still made up the volumes in a market like India.

Messenger Lite has earlier been rolled out in countries such as Vietnam, Nigeria, Peru, Turkey, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands.

The Messenger app on Android had nearly 5 billion downloads and had been ranked four out of five by 46,056,597 users.