Even though LinkedIn continues to close its $26.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft, the US-based professional network, with over 37 million members in India, unveiled three products for the country on Monday.
In an interaction with DH, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said that the company is very serious about its India market, and made it clear by launching products and features like LinkedIn Lite, online job placement tests, and business tools.
“India is our second largest market and we have over 37 million members in the country. It is a very powerful and vital market for us, and these new products are made in India, and made for India. We believe that India will be an important driver in our vision of creating economic opportunity for the world,” said Weiner.
LinkedIn Lite is the latest version made for mobile. “LinkedIn Lite will keep away things like extra graphics and rich media to download four times faster than LinkedIn’s basic mobile site. Even though Indians use mobile phones rather than PCs to access the internet, data is very expensive for an average user. LinkedIn Lite will help them to use data better,” he said.
As part of reaching out to Indian students access jobs, the company unveiled the LinkedIn Placements to provide an online test for users and help place them on jobs.
“Students can log onto the site to take an online assessment test, which gives them direct access to thousands of openings in 35 top corporates in India. The platform can be accessed at linkedin.com/placements or placements.com,” he said.
On the acquisition, he said the company is gearing up for the event. “We have reached a definitive agreement and there is no change in that. We are still in the throes of how to execute it. We are all excited about it,” he said.
LinkedIn, which has 450 million members globally, also counts prominent thought leaders like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Piyush Gupta (Group CEO, DBS Bank) and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (Chairman and Managing Director, Biocon) among its users.
The company’s India country manager and head of product Akshay Kothari said the new products will be available in the next few weeks. “While LinkedIn has grown multiple folds in India since we started operating here six years ago, there’s so much more we want to do here.We are committed to India by delivering value to even more members and be a part of their professional growth journey, by investing and innovating locally,” said Kothari.
Kothari joined LinkedIn when the company acquired Pulse, the news reading app he co-founded.
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