LinkedIn opens India R&D centre
LinkedIn Corporation said Tuesday it had opened a research and development centre in India, the US-based professional online networking site's first such office outside North America.
The centre in the high-tech hub of Bangalore in the southern Indian state of Karnataka will support the website's technology infrastructure used to build core products and features of LinkedIn, the company said in a statement.
The company, which offers recruiting tools and enables people to network professionally, did not say how much it was investing in the Indian centre.
India is the third-largest Internet market by users, behind China and the United States, with just eight percent of its population of 1.2 billion online.
Internet use in India is expected to grow at an exponential pace, giving LinkedIn enough potential to boost its number of customers in the country, the company said.
LinkIn has 135 million members in 200 countries of whom 83 million are active subscribers, said Deep Nishar, senior vice president for products. In India, it has 12 million subscribers, of whom a little over half are active.
India forms LinkedIn's second-largest market by user base, after the United States, which has 45 million subscribers, Nishar added.
Headquartered in Mountain View, California, the company -- founded in 2003 -- already has over 70 employees in India in its sales offices and the new technology center.
It plans to hire up to 30 network engineers, software developers and database administrators in India.
(--Dow Jones News Wires contributed to this article--)
(c) 2011 AFP
