Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook, at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi on Wednesday.Credit Money Sharma/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

HONG KONG — Speaking at a town-hall-style meeting in India on Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg sought to explain, and at times defend, Facebook’s plans to expand access to the Internet by offering a stripped-down free version.

During a roughly hourlong question-and-answer session at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, Mr. Zuckerberg said Internet.org — which offers a purposely stripped down version of the Internet to minimize data use — had one million members in India and had brought online 15 million people around the world who would otherwise not have Internet access.

Despite the promising, if difficult to verify, statistics, the program has not gone without complaints in India, the world’s largest democracy. Critics argue that by controlling which companies and individuals can offer services on Internet.org, Facebook is creating a walled-off kingdom in which it decides the beneficiaries of its initiative.

Mr. Zuckerberg emphasized that Internet.org was “an open platform that any developer can build something for, regardless of who they are, as long as they follow the basic rules of what Internet.org is.”
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