Last August we noted that Facebook had 82 million active users in India. But now the social network has hit an important milestone, surpassing 100 million monthly active users in the country.

Javier Olivan, Facebook's vice-president of growth and analytics, told India's Economic Times that the landmark number was reached on March 31st. 84 percent of those 100 million Facebook users in India access it via mobile.

India is set to hit a quarter of a billion web users sometime this year.

Despite Facebook's strong growth in India - up from a mere eight million users in 2010 when Facebook opened a local office - the US-based site is still facing growing rivalry in the nation from messaging apps. Facebook-owned WhatsApp has 40 million active users in India, and rival chat apps like WeChat and Line are also battling to grow their numbers in the mobile-first country.

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This article originally published at Tech in Asia here