Competition is an Indicator that the Market is Doing Well: Hari V Krishnan, Country Manager, LinkedIn India

by sweta on July 18th, 2011

One of the fastest growing social networks, the largest professional network and a successful IPO, LinkedIn clearly is one of the biggest achiever of the year. In a country obsessed with social networking sites, LinkedIn has carved a niche for itself. Hari V Krishnan, Country Manager, LinkedIn India started the Indian operation in Dec 2009 and in just a year and half, the number of users has grown by almost 300 percent. In an exclusive interview with Buzzom, Mr. Krishnan talks about the growth of the site, the Indian market, the competition and more.

It’s been about one and half year since you joined LinkedIn India. How has the journey been so far?

LinkedIn has been a great place to work and it is gratifying to be part of the LinkedIn experience. We started our operations in December 2009 with more than 3.4 million members in India and today there are more than 10 million Indian professionals who are connected with LinkedIn. For the past year and a half we have invested time in understanding our customers better and providing them with solutions. We have also strengthened our marketing and sales team to reach out to many brands in India.

How is Indian market important to LinkedIn? What are the plans for the future? Any acquisition in plan for India?

India is an important market for LinkedIn globally. LinkedIn’s user base today has more than 100 million professionals globally, with over 10 million from India.

We believe that India is a growing economy and LinkedIn is the exchange that connects India’s talent. We have already connected 25% of the 40 million white collared professionals present in India today and will concentrate our efforts towards connecting the rest of India’s professional community to help make them more successful and productive. As we scale up our business in India, we will also continue to drive awareness about LinkedIn’s offerings. LinkedIn’s Marketing Solutions are currently being used by brands like Volkswagen, Jet Airways, CNN, ICICI Lombard and HopSim. Even recruiters like ING Vyasa Bank, Genpact and HCL have benefitted from LinkedIn’s Corporate Solutions.

LinkedIn has grown phenomenally and we have seen the results in the response to IPO last month. What do you credit the success to?

As is mentioned, at LinkedIn we see ourselves fueling the talent economy. If talent was a currency, LinkedIn is the exchange where we connect talent with opportunity at massive scale. LinkedIn positions itself as a professional network which is one of the dimensions of social media.

The key to a successful social media platform is to target the right audience. By targeting the appropriate audience in the correct context, we have been able to more effectively reach and engage with our potential customers. LinkedIn has maintained its focus while providing a platform for professionals to engage and collaborate with each other, thus making them more productive.

These days, there are a number of Social Media sites coming from Asia like Ushi, Weibo, Youku and others. Is there any serious competition for LinkedIn from Asia?

Competition is an indicator that the market is doing well and there is more demand for online networking platforms. Increasingly users understand the difference in social networking and professional networking platforms and have different objectives of visiting these. Indian professionals are fast realizing the value of professional networks, which can be a very effective platform for career development if leveraged appropriately. Be it for seeking new jobs, connecting with peers for knowledge and insights or even new business development

Delivering business productivity tools to our members wherever their work takes them is an important step in our strategy and by increasing the number of touch points, we have been able to reach out to more business people than any other professional network.

Moreover, LinkedIn is built to connect the world’s professionals and is well placed to provide them with the tools and opportunities to use the platform as a launchpad for their career development.

Something on the recent development: tell us about the marriage of LinkedIn and BharatMatrimony.com.

Our relationship with Bharatmatrimony seeks to add a deeper level of trust to the matrimonial profiles of professionals seeking a partner/spouse. We are delighted that Bharatmatrimony is using our open API in a creative and innovative way to develop an enhanced offering to enhance overall profile credibility and create value for their members.

Most developers believe that LinkedIn is not friendly towards them. What do you tell them?

LinkedIn’s open API platform has enabled developers from India and across the world to custom-build integrations with LinkedIn.com to provide members an engaged professional networking experience.

LinkedIn has been strict about its API usage. Can we expect a little more liberty in time to come?

LinkedIn is passionate about maintaining the best user experience for all our users and ensuring that our technology investments scale ahead of our rapidly growing active base of users. Part of managing the overall system performance is maintaining stable levels for API ‘calls’. We are already used by hundreds of developers, third party sites and applications on a daily basis and the APIs continue to improve.

You are an active social media person yourself. What will be your word of caution/ advice to our reader for effectively using Social Media?

Online media is a very vibrant and your online profile is an important tool to brand yourself , with several ways available to strengthen your online identity. Your comments showcase the flavour of your personality and hence, it’s extremely important to be careful about what you say online. For instance on LinkedIn Answers, professionals who give their opinion are looked at as experts in their field of work and it reflects their personality and their online profile of record.

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