YAHOO INDIA OPERATIONS UNLIKELY TO BE AFFECTED

kalyan.subramani@hindustantimes.com

The Verizon-Yahoo deal is unlikely to affect the former Internet giant’s operations in India.

There was a time when a whole new generation of India youth identified with the Yahoo mail. But the emergence of Google changed all that.

Yahoo has two entities in India. The global corporation’s India office, which is called Yahoo India, and its software arm, Yahoo Software Development Centre. The former came to India at the end of 2000, while the latter arrived two years later.

Google came to India four year later in 2004 with two centres each in Bangalore and Hyderabad.

Yahoo India does not give out the number of people the company employs, or its contribution to the US parent in terms of technology or cost advantages.

At its peak, Yahoo’s software arm in India employed over 2000 people. In 2014, the set up was dismantled, when a number of people moved to the US. But all this while, Google continued to expand its operations in India, the latest being the launch of its second Hyderabad campus in May, the largest outside the United States.

The setting up of WiFI hotspots across railway stations in the country (the service is currently available in 20 stations, and the search giant plans to cover 80 more by by the end of 2016) has also helped Google grow in India.

Besides, the rise of two domestic companies, Sify and Refiff, during 2002-2003, also halted Yahoo’s growth in India. ”

“By the time Yahoo came to India, Sify and Rediff had already well established themselves. There was very little Yahoo could have offered to Indians, which would have been unique or valuable,” a senior IT industry executive told HT.