We haven't driven paid subscriptions in India: Nishant Rao

Interview with Country Manager, LinkedIn

Professional networking platform LinkedIn has seen exceptional growth in India within five years of starting operations, from 3.4 million members in November 2009 to over 27 million. In an interview with Bibhu Ranjan Mishra, LinkedIn’s country manager, Nishant Rao, talks about why the company has consciously decided not to monetise some revenue streams. Edited excerpts…

LinkedIn looks better than any other job portal...

We don’t see ourselves as competition to job portals. LinkedIn is a professional network, our ambition is to connect the world’s professionals and make them more productive. In doing that, we help our members find opportunities – it could be jobs, business development or even marketing research. So, jobs are a part of the overall offering, not all of it. Because we can do matching, we put out jobs that may be relevant.

Is finding relevant jobs something that makes LinkedIn different from other job boards?

Yes, that’s what makes us different; it is a quality experience. Most of the job boards (portals) take job classifieds online. But the one thing that is common for every job board is that a job seeker has to come in, look and find roles best suited for him or her. But at LinkedIn, jobs surface to the members, based on his/her profile, experience, expertise and geography. And that’s where I think we are able to do at a scale which no one else can. Besides, because I am connected with some people in my network who also may be working with the organisations where I am looking for a job, it also makes my job search easier. It’s because a job seeker can get a sense from them about the culture or job experience. It’s a much more informed decision.

How successful you have been in monetising the platform in India?

We do well on the monetising front globally as well as in India. We have been able to monetise our ‘talent solutions’ process well in India since both recruiters as well as members (candidates) see this as a win-win situation. We have also seen success in monetising the ‘marketing solutions’. But we have not consciously driven the ‘premium subscriptions’ business stream because our philosophy is about making the free product very effective. I like people to fully experience the platform, understand it before we start monetising it. Globally, talent solutions make up about 55-60 per cent of our revenues while marketing solutions account for 25 per cent and premium subscriptions 20 per cent.

In terms of membership, where do you stand in India? How do you compare your Indian growth rate with that of the US?

LinkedIn is already an 11-year-old company and was started predominantly in the US. But our growth trajectory is much higher in India than in the US. We launched in India about four years ago, but have now grown to around 27 million in membership from around three million in late 2009. India is the second largest market for LinkedIn after the US, where we have around 100 million users. Next to India comes the UK. In terms of revenues, the US accounts for around 60 per cent.

Over the past couple of years privacy issues and increased government interference have become bottlenecks for social sites. How do you deal with this situation?

We are a ‘members-first’ organisation. We were very cautious before going into China because members’ privacy is very important to us. We also abide by the laws of the land though at the same time ensure not to disclose our members’ information proactively. We have our data centres spread across the world and Singapore is the hub for Asia.

You also have a sizable R&D presence in India. Where do they fit into LinkedIn’s overall engineering activities?

India is the only other country outside the US where we have representation in almost every field. We are doing core engineering and R&D here. We have been very careful in making sure that we design it as an equal partner to the US. Because we believe we have amazing talent here and we want to contribute at a global level. We are adding value right from day one.