India among top 3 in most SMB professionals on LinkedIn

SMB defined as companies that currently have 11 to 500 employees

India has one of the world's highest number of professionals on professional networking site LinkedIn, as per a study by the site. the world’s largest professional network with more than 175 million members worldwide and over 16 million in India, today released new data about its popularity among small business professionals.

LinkedIn looked at how many small business professionals are already members on the platform and found that India ranks 3rd in the number of small and medium (SMB) business that have a presence on LinkedIn. Among the 200 countries analyzed, LinkedIn revealed that 1.01 million SMB professionals were from India.

 

For the purposes of this study, LinkedIn defined small business professionals as LinkedIn members who currently work at a company that has between 11 to 500 employees. LinkedIn' s data revealed that globally, there are 15.2 million LinkedIn members who are currently small business professionals and 75 per cent of whom reside in 10 countries around the world.
 
"Especially for small business and start-up organizations, LinkedIn acts as a trigger to begin business conversations with prospective partners, seek advice from industry peers and gain powerful insights for various decision making processes. Indian professionals are increasingly realizing the benefits of maintaining and nourishing their presence on LinkedIn," said Hari V Krishnan, Country Manager, LinkedIn India. He cited the example of one their  members, Purvish Diwanji who successfully bagged a US$15,000 assignment within just 7 days by establishing contact with a prospective buyer from South Africa through LinkedIn.
 
LinkedIn’s connection director Nicole Williams explained that small business professionals leverage the site not only for critical hires, but they also use LinkedIn Groups like 'mini conferences', where they can learn more about various subjects like advertising and public relations. Industry experts said that such professional could meet potential vendors and business partners for their ventures on these sites, and hence they must put it to maximum utilisation.

Human resource consultants are of the view that professional sites like LinkedIn can help SMB professioanls leverage the power of the internet. "This is the demand of the hour. The sites help them optimise their resources, since their reach offline is somewhat limited," said Sunil Goel, director of human resource firm GlobalHunt.