India is inching closer to overtake the U.S. as Facebook’s biggest market, at least in terms of the number of active users.

With over 100 million users as of March 31, India is now the only country where Facebook can aspire to have 1 billion users, thanks to a growing base of Internet users (currently around 200 million) and increasing proportion of mobile phone subscribers in its over 1.23 billion population.

In an interview with India’s Economic Times newspaper, Javier Olivan, vice-president, growth & analytics at Facebook said getting 1 billion users in the country will be altogether a different challenge.

As we have been writing, while India was expected to become Facebook’s biggest market in terms of number of users later this year, but it’s always going be difficult to translate that into ad dollars for the Palo Alto company anytime soon. Indeed, companies like Facebook and Twitter are not new to this problem – their biggest user markets (mostly outside of the U.S.) are not necessarily top revenue sources.

For its part, Facebook is pushing aggressively to increase its revenue per user in markets outside the U.S. During its fourth quarter earnings announced in January this year, Facebook said its revenue per user increased to $2.14, driven by 33% growth in Europe and 17% rise in Asia.

Facebook established its first India office in Hyderabad in 2010 when its user base was less than 10 million. Of over 100 million current users in India, nearly 84 million access the platform on their mobile phones.

PHOTO VIA SHUTTERSTOCK