Yahoo! expects to double India headcount in 2008

Singapore, June 24 (PTI) - The long drawn takeover battle
and exodus of top executive ranks notwithstanding, internet
major Yahoo! expects to more than double its employee strength
in India to close to 2,700 by the end of 2008.

In the first six months of this year itself, Yahoo! has
added more than 1,000 employees for its India operations and
further 500 people could be added to its headcount through the
year, Yahoo! India spokesperson told P.T.I.

At the start of 2008, the company had about 1,200
people on its rolls in India, which has now grown to close to
2,200 employees.

"On an average, we are recruiting about 60-80 new
employees every month since the start of this year and expect
to continue the trend till the end of 2008," the official
said.

Going by this average, the total strength could be
between 2,500-2,700 employees by the end of 2008.

"We are upbeat on Yahoo!'s India operations," the
official said, adding, as the company is "pretty aggressive"
when it comes to recruitment in India and the operations are
being diversified to reach more number of internet users.

However, globally the picture seems to be gloomy for the
search major with many top ranking executives reported to have
exited the company.

Earlier this year, Yahoo! had announced that it would
globally cut down about 1,000 jobs, while in recent weeks,
U.S. media reports have said that a number of top level
executives of Yahoo! are leaving and the pace has further
increased following the failed takeover attempt by software
giant Microsoft.

Many of the executives, including senior vice-president
of Yahoo!'s search group Vish Makhijani, are reported to have
left the firm.

In February, the internet major had reportedly sacked
about 40 employees mainly at its Bangalore R&D centre due to
non-performance. However, there were no official confirmation
on the report.

After months of efforts to acquire Yahoo!, Microsoft on
May 3 officially announced the withdrawal of proposal to buy
the internet major. Microsoft had offered an estimated 44.6
billion dollars for the buyout.

"Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by
roughly USD 5 billion, Yahoo! has not moved toward accepting
our offer. After careful consideration, we believe the
economics demanded by Yahoo! do not make sense for us, and it
is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees
and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal," Microsoft
C.E.O. Steve Ballmer had said.

Currently in India, Yahoo! is present in three cities --
Bangalore, New Delhi and Mumbai.

The operations in the country are spread over Research &
Development, Sales & Marketing and Research Lab, among others.

Yahoo! is aiming to become the starting point primarily
for internet search and mail, among others, the spokesperson
added.

Further, the internet major is slowly hugging the concept
of 'open source coding' and has made Application Programming
Interface available for most of its recent products. PTI