Facebook is all set to launch Instagram Lite, a lighter version of its popular app, in 170 countries, including India, to overcome slow or indifferent Internet speed. And, it only takes 2 MB to download.

The new app for Android is designed to provide people living in rural and remote communities with a high-quality Instagram experience using minimal data, Facebook said on its website on Wednesday.

Rolling out in more than 170 countries, Facebook said the arrival of the new app is “not a moment too soon” as, during the past year, Instagram had become a lifeline for many to connect with loved ones or find a small moment of inspiration, be it a photo of a friend’s newborn or a video of puppies discovering snow.

“No matter where they are, people want to be entertained and inspired by those that they love,” Michelle Lourie, one of the main creators of the Insta Lite, was quoted as saying on FB’s official website, “It’s difficult to do that on Instagram with an entry-level phone that has storage constraints.”

When Facebook, as per media reports, bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 it shocked many because the princely sum was paid at that time for a company with 13 employees. Instagram today has over one billion users and contributes over $20 billion to Facebook’s annual revenues.

The FB post said for millions of people, accessing daily doses of connection and entertainment, it was not so simple. Slightly more than 63 per cent of the world’s population is online, as opposed to nearly 90 per cent in North America. And many of the regions that are connected, do not possess the most up-to-date mobile devices, robust internet networks, or affordable data plans needed for swift delivery of the data-rich videos and images found on Instagram.

For instance, the posts states only around 50% of households in India have access to the internet.

“Our teams build these lightweight versions of our apps for people with low connectivity or limited data plans because our basic premise is to leave no one behind,” Reuters quoted Tzach Hadar, director of product management at Facebook Tel Aviv, as saying

Tel Aviv is one of the largest strategic engineering hubs for Facebook globally. “We wanted the Instagram experience to remain fast, high-quality and reliable, irrespective of the device, platform and network people are on,” Hadar added.

What the team came up with is an app that requires only 2 MB to download on Android — considerably less than the full-size version, which was closer to 30 MB — but retains the key features that people using entry-level devices want. To keep those features on the smaller app, the team took a page from Facebook Lite, another Tel Aviv creation that debuted a few years ago, by offloading into the cloud much of the code from the app running on the phone.

The team then focused on what people valued most, namely video and messaging, which remote dwellers use more actively than their urban counterparts. Both posed a tightrope walk for engineers. While the team wanted to preserve the beauty and craft of Instagram’s design, they also had to remain mindful of how the app would perform in a setting with poor connectivity and slower networks.

“Instant feedback is very important for anyone with ongoing network problems,” says Lourie, “If you have to wait for some animation to upload, it’s unclear to a person if something went wrong or if the feature is just not working.”