Internet major Yahoo! is looking at ramping up its India headcount by 15% next year, seeing growth in its business both locally and overseas. Yahoo! India currently has over 2,000 employees, the second-largest centre outside its Sunnyvale, California, headquarters.
?The hiring will be in the areas of software development, which includes product management, software developers, engineers and project managers. We will also hire aggressively for our labs including scientists and researchers. In the business side we will continue to invest in sales, marketing and editorial,? said Aparna Ballakur, vice-president (HR), Yahoo!, India.
?For sales, marketing and editorial we are completely looking at lateral hiring with media, advertising and online background. For editorial we are looking at someone from the content creation and publishing field. In sales and marketing someone with 7-8 years of experience and above is a desired candidate,? Ballakur added. For scientists and researchers, Yahoo! is looking at candidates with computer science and sociology background, with an understanding of large data and human behaviour.
?For Yahoo!, India is a key market, both from R&D and business perspective. We continue to invest heavily in our software development centre to build product teams. Our growth this year has been across all aspect of product development. In the business side, growth has been predominantly in editorial for the local content, sales and marketing,? Ballakur said. Yahoo invests over a billion dollar in R&D globally.
In the last few years, the India centre has transformed from being an inward looking R&D centre to a market-centric innovation hub. It has created products such as ?Yahoo! Movieplex,? a video destination that allows users to watch full-length movies for free, ?Yahoo! Cricket,? where users can follow cricket and play games.
`Predictopus?, an online game that allows players to make predictions for the ongoing tournament, besides launching India-specific initiatives like a website devoted to providing content on education. The Bangalore centre?s output in terms of intellectual property is increasing at a rate of 50%-60% every year. Local language-based content, video content and cricket are expected to be the key drivers in India.