Resident Indians, who form the biggest users of Facebook outside the US, can own a piece of the most popular social networking website through its upcoming $5 billion IPO.

Though Facebook’s initial float will be in the US, a banker to the IPO told Financial Chronicle that resident Indians could participate in the mega share offering after opening a bank account with any one of the book running banks.

Quoting IFR, Bloomberg earlier reported that Facebook selected Morgan

Stanley and four

others as book runners — Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital and JP Morgan — to handle the

mega IPO.According to a report in Financial Chronicle on Tuesday, by hitting the 43.49 million mark, India has displaced Indonesia as the largest Facebook user base outside the US. The Indian obsession with Facebook can now be extended to the initial public offer.

Under the liberalised remittance scheme, all resident Indians, including minors, are allowed to freely remit up to $200,000 per financial year for any permissible current or capital account transaction or a combination of both.

“But they need to first open an account with any of the i-bankers to the issue,” the banker to the Facebook initial public offer said. Facebook, founded by Mark Zuckerberg and others from their Harvard dorm room in February 2004, has 812 million users in over 200 countries. More than 50 per cent of its active users log on to Facebook on any given day, with the average user having over 130 friends.

V K Bansal, chairman of investment banking of Morgan Stanley India, did not respond to calls or an SMS sent to his mobile. In India, Morgan Stanley was the lead banker for MakeMyTrip’s $70 million ADRs offer in August 2010.

The final pricing of Facebook shares may be the deciding factor whether or not Indians will bid for a piece of the initial public offer. According to IFR, the final pricing will not be set for several months, during which the size of the initial public offercould be increased should investor demand warrant it.