Betting big on India, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner launches three products

LinkedIn expects to take what it calls ‘Made in India, for India’ products to other markets in the world, the CEO of the professional social networking company said. Economic Times

“There’s a lot of learning from what we are going to do here that we think can be extended elsewhere beyond India,” Jeff Weiner told ET in an exclusive interview. “That certainly holds true for LinkedIn Lite that we are rolling out in India for the first time. That’s going to make sense in other markets where you see very similar restrictions – where you see restrictions in storage and bandwidth,” he said.

LinkedIn, which was acquired by Microsoft in June for $26.2 billion, on Monday unveiled three products – a stripped down mobile site called LinkedIn LiteÍ¾ a product aimed at the college placements market called LinkedIn Placements, and a LinkedIn Starter Pack aimed at startups and small businesses. All of them were entirely developed by its 250personstrong R&D outfit in Bengaluru. India is home to LinkedIn’s secondlargest user base with 37 million members, only behind the US, which has over 130 million users. Also, the fact that LinkedIn has chosen to build customised products for the country underlines India’s importance, said Weiner.

“We have done this in China before. So far, these are the only two markets (China and India), outside the US, where we do global development for that particular country,” said Weiner. He also gave an emphatic thumbsup to the Indian government’s digital push.