We felt we were product brainstorming with the PM: Akshay Kothari

Interview with India head, LinkedIn

The top team of LinkedIn recently got a 30-minute slot to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi at his residence in New Delhi. It was a holiday and the meeting lasted an hour. The PM, who's an active LinkedIn member himself, discussed the opportunities around employment generation, including blue-collar jobs with the team at length. The 30-year-old India head of LinkedIn Akshay Kothari tells Karan Choudhury and Nivedita Mookerji about how India is at the centrestage for the California-based networking company, which was acquired by Microsoft in a $26-billion deal announced earlier this year. Excerpts:

What is the latest buzz at LinkedIn India?

We've had an incredible fortnight. We have launched three new products and all of them have been Made In India for India. For instance, LinkedIn Placements is trying to democratise opportunity for every student, be it in Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi or in a remote part of Bihar. We'd give a level-playing field through a standardised test, which is connected to thousands of job openings in multinational companies. The second is Linked Lite, which is designed for the most economical phone in the worst connected areas. This quarter, we'll focus on expanding it all over India. It has the highest probability of getting introduced in other emerging markets. If it does well, it has the potential to be the default experience for the world. The third initiative is our starter pack, which looks at job creators. For under Rs 1 lakh, a company gets access to our recruiter products, job postings, credits for advertising, etc.

Has PM Modi given you any feedback on how the platform should be made more meaningful in India?

We got to spend an hour with him on the festival of Eid last month and it was fascinating. We were lucky, as it was a holiday and we ended up meeting him at his residence. The meeting was scheduled for 30 minutes, but we could spend an hour with him. To me, the most surprising part of the meeting was that it felt like we were product brainstorming with him. Some of the ideas he was talking about were quite interesting. He asked us how we can expand to all sorts of jobs, including for blue-collar workers. He was interested in figuring out how to export as well as bring in talent.

Is there any follow-up to that meeting?

We're working closely with the human resource ministry to make placements available to every college.

Your latest product, Open Candidates, is about a candidate secretly signalling to a potential employer that he's interested in a new job. When will you launch it in India?

It could come to India soon. LinkedIn has, over the years, been involved in passive recruiting. Interestingly, what we realise is that there are people who don't want to publicly announce that they're looking for a job, but they're open to new opportunities. On LinkedIn, the new feature allows one to secretly say he's interested in hearing from recruiters. It'll be a great feature for India, which is a high job-seeker market.

Would you secretly tell someone that you are open to a new opportunity?

At some point, yeah why not (laughs). I mean, all of us might. You get to a point in your career when you have done your best, contributed in a certain way, and are looking for a change. I think when that happens, though I am far from that, I'll use that secret functionality.

On job placements, who is your biggest competitor in India?

There are definitely a bunch of job boards out there, but we don't consider ourselves as one. Within the job board, the Naukris of the world are probably doing a similar thing. Our approach is quite different. What we're trying to do is build a professional network. I don't think anybody else is doing it with that kind of ambition.

In India, how will the starter package and your other products help in increasing your revenues?

We've launched the starter package as a pilot. We've not offered all our solutions together anywhere else in the world; this is the first time we are doing that. With this, companies can apply; we'll then pick some 100 companies and work with them. The idea is to ensure their needs are met, extracting value from all different solutions we have. After six months, we want to ensure they actually upgrade to some of the bigger packages we have. We don't have any goals for this. We are in this for the long haul. We are investing early. So, when a start-up becomes a 1,000-plus organisation, we are there to help it grow.

What are your India-specific monetisation plans? Where does India stand in the pecking order of revenues?

If you look at the recruiting solution specifically, 65 per cent of our addressable market comprises small and medium businesses. From that standpoint, it is a crucial market for us. So far, a lot of success we have had has been with bigger enterprises. What we are doing with the starter pack is a new frontier for us, which is to really look at small and medium businesses. In terms of revenues, I think Indian numbers are not comparable with the US, but they are now starting to be meaningful, from an engagement standpoint. Over time, it would translate into bigger percentage of revenue numbers. In the pecking order within Asia, it is among the top three, with Australia being on top. In growth rate, India is one of the fastest-growing markets in the world.

Facebook is getting into a marketplace model of buying and selling. Does LinkedIn have similar plans for revenue generation?

Our learning product, which was launched two months ago based on our acquisition of Lynda, could end up being the biggest business line in India. I'm bullish on that one. Within this space of hiring, marketing, selling and learning, there could be new products we can launch. Over time, as we see opportunities, we can create for India.

With Microsoft, how are you planning to monetise your various services?

There's a whole range of possibilities, but I think a lot of that is currently still in the planning stage, as the deal has not closed yet. We're bullish on what we can do together.

Are you hiring mostly from the Silicon Valley for tech at LinkedIn India?

From the Valley, it's just me and my counterpart in engineering. Because of excitement and the products being launched in India, we are increasingly getting employees in the US and Singapore, who want to do a stint in India.

Do you think the social media is saturated?

It's going to be interesting as different solutions are resonating with different kinds of people. What we're focused on is definitely in the professional space. From that perspective, I don't think there are other networks or other social media properties doing what LinkedIn is trying to do. We're the opposite of other social networks in some ways. While others are trying to make users spend as much time as one can on their sites, LinkedIn is about spending the least amount of time and getting work done. We want to be there when we can add value.

REELED IN
Key stats from LinkedIn’s Q2 2016

• $933 million: Total revenue, an increase of 31% year-on-year
   
• $597 million: Talent solutions revenue, an increase of 35% year-on-year
   
• $181 million: Marketing solutions revenue, an increase of 29% year-on-year
   
• $155 million: Premium subscriptions revenue, an increase of 21% year-on-year
   
• 450 million: Cumulative membership growth, an increase of 18% year-on-year
   
• 37 million: Current India membership base