LinkedIn expanding into India with three new products

SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — As LinkedIn continue to wait out the final phases of its acquisition from Microsoft for $26.2 billion, the professional social media platform continues to grow and expand its business model, with its latest developments coming on the international front. Last week, the company announced it had reached the 100-million user mark in Asia Pacific, and Monday at an event in Bengaluru, India, it unveiled three of its newest products set to be rolled out in the country, where it currently has 37 million users.

LinkedIn Lite, a new pared-down mobile version of LinkedIn is designed to work on lower-end handsets and those that are accessing the site with limited or very expensive mobile data services. It will be rolling out in the next couple of weeks, a spokesperson said.

That in addition to the launching of LinkedIn Placements and the all-new LinkedIn Starter Pack. Placements will provide online tests for users to help place them in jobs, and the Starter Pack is being introduced for businesses to better run their profiles on the social platform.

Whilst attending an event in Delhi Monday, chief executive Jeff Weiner said that LinkedIn Lite would be rolling out to users in the country in the next few months. As with other “lite” versions made for mobile, LinkedIn’s service does away with things like extra graphics and rich media to download four times faster than LinkedIn’s basic mobile site. The company claims the homepage only takes up 150 KB of data, and further pages 70 KB.

LinkedIn partnered with HackerRank for the creation of Placements, as well as Aspiring Minds, Co-cubes and Wheebox, to develop an online test for users to show off their skills and interests, which are then matched up with a number of jobs being advertised on the site. There are some 50 jobs already up for Placements through the scheme in areas like software development, marketing and finance.

Starter Pack will appear on the surface to be the least interesting to the common consumer, however, it has the potential to serve as an interesting compendium to how LinkedIn hopes to grow its profile as a directory for businesses online, and potentially develop those relationships, too. The promise for the companies that build profiles on LinkedIn’s platform is that they can market themselves better: “Grow your Brand. Grow your Team. Grow your Influence,” is how LinkedIn describes it.

“India is a vital market for LinkedIn, as we work towards realising our vision of creating economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce,” said Akshay Kothari, Country Manager and Head of Product, LinkedIn India, in a statement. Kothari joined LinkedIn when the company acquired Pulse, the newsreading app he co-founded. “It’s already one of the world’s most important economies, and continues to experience strong GDP growth. While LinkedIn has grown multiple folds in India since we started operating here 6 years ago, there’s so much more we want to do here. We are committed to India and to boosting our ability to deliver value to even more members and be a part of their professional growth journey, by investing and innovating locally.”