Yahoo sees local services boosting growth

NEW DELHI: Yahoo Inc, the Internet majors India arm, is eyeing the localised services in Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and the NCR, to drive the domestic growth, its top official said.

Financial details of the initiative or the revenue expectations was not disclosed citing company policies.

Gopal Krishna, head of audience, Yahoo! India said, “When a company invests heavily in a product it means there is large user attraction. We have invested quiet significantly for the product, and it takes time and resources.” He said the country’s online advertising is growing rapidly at a healthy rate and they plan to capture a significant chunk of the revenue pie.

Yahoo said its localised service expects to provide user-relevant information and plans to provide information about other parts of the country, apart from the four locations.

Yahoo has a similar services model in the US and the UK. The services can be used through internet enabled mobile devices and computers. Yahoo monetizes the local service by online advertising, from which it earns most of its revenue.

The company may introduce a similar service in tier-2 cities. Users can write reviews, leave footprints and map annotations, and also publish free listing to local businesses.

India is increasingly becoming a popular market for US-based technology majors, especially after the recent launches of Indian versions of YouTube by Google, social networking site MySpace, and Microsoft focusing India for its Windows Live Cloud content.

Yahoo plans to launch four more localised products in India by this year.

vivek_s@dnaindia.net