News: India to have a tenth of Yahoo!’s global workforce

(DNA 20/09/2006) Mumbai - Internet major Yahoo! is looking at significantly ramping up its operations in India. Although its chief operating officer Daniel Rosenweig did not announce any multi-million dollar investment on his maiden visit to the country, he said India would be amongst the top investment destinations for the company, whose services one in every two internet users accesses at least once a month globally.

The company’s engineering centre in Bangalore, the largest outside the US, has 800 people on its roll, and is expected to rise to 1,000 by the year-end, representing one-tenth of Yahoo!’s global strength.

“Initially, when we started, it (the research and development centre) was strictly a back-end setup. Today, it is part of our global engineering set up, leading in innovation. In the future, there would be products developed completely out of India,” Rosenweig said.

Already, engineers in India are working on Yahoo!’s most popular services like search, mail, messenger, media operating system and mobile. The scope of work includes product engineering, technology research and market innovation, from conception to research, development and operations.

India’s contribution to its $5.3 billion global revenues may be less than significant today, but Rosenweig says he is “very satisfied” with the Indian operations. Low internet penetration in the country is the chief dampener for the company. But, with a population of over a billion people, it is a market nobody can take lightly.

Recognising that it cannot grow faster than the overall internet market, Yahoo! is breaking some boundaries here. Since along with connectivity, language is hampering growth, it would soon launch content in local language, as well as localise content to expand user base, says George Zacharias, head of Yahoo!’s Indian operations.

Also, the fact that India has more mobile phone connections - over 120 million and counting - than personal computers isn’t lost on Rosenweig. While Yahoo! mobile is already popular (by how much, he wouldn’t say), the company is entering into alliances with handset manufacturers and service providers.

“We realise that for many, their first point of contact with Yahoo! would be their mobile devices rather than the computer,” he says.

To gain market share, Rosenweing says the company follows the policy of ‘build, buy or partner’. Globally, it has gobbled up over two dozen companies over the last few years. Last month it acquired a stake in bharatmatrimony.com, a wedding site.