We will build content partnerships in India
It has been almost six months since Shailesh Rao took over as Managing Director (Sales and Operations), Google India.
In a candid interview with BT’s Kushan Mitra, he shares his thoughts about the Indian internet market and the direction Google is taking in this country.
A recent ComScore report pointed out that there are only around 22 million internet users in India compared to many more mobile phone users. Does that have any bearing on the way Google functions in India?
Absolutely. We are a very missiondriven company, and we wear our mission, which is to organise the world’s information, on our sleeve. We track the way that people consume information, and informed by that, we logically develop an approach.
You cannot deliver on your mission if you ignore the realities.
If the bulk of people consume information via the mobile phone either through SMS or through mobile data services, we have to address that market.
You have developed some mobile adds such as Gmail for mobile…
What we have done in the mobile space, not just in India, but globally, is actually very similar to what our current state of affairs is in India, which is that we have just begun the process.
You can characterise the process as the beginning of experimentation and intelligent dabbling.
What’s the response to your services in India?
In mobile and in India, we have just begun to ramp up, and we have got I look at the response and think that while Google has not been as involved in India as it should be, or it will be, the response we have got for our truly global services, such as Search or Orkut, has been tremendous.
That gives me a lot of hope that now, as we build resources and focus on this market, and as we drive towards localisation, which includes mobile, points of access and other India-related content, it bodes well for us as we continue to increase the reach of our services.
You mentioned India-related content. How do you see the spread of Indian language content in India?
There is not enough diversity of web content; there are too few websites that get a large part of the traffic. If you count the number of India content pages on the web, it is paltry actually. That is not at all a reflection of what Indian users want. That gap needs to be addressed and we hope to be a catalyst in further technology innovation in bringing India-related content online.
Are you looking at tie-ups with content publishers in India?
We give voice to content publishers and help them connect with their audiences. More specifically, we are bringing the same mindset and the same alignment of interests that we have around the world. And we are aggressively ramping up our efforts to build content partnerships in India with a wide variety of content publishers—be in textual, video or local, which we believe will be relevant to our Indian users.
