The India connect

“What has happened has happened. What we should look at is the work that is happening now.” Gurmit Singh, four months into his stint as the managing director of Yahoo India, sounds a tad exasperated when I ask him about Yahoo Messenger, the once insanely popular messaging tool which has since gone to the Internet’s graveyard. That sentiment of moving on is at the heart of chief executive Marissa Mayer’s efforts at reviving one of the Internet’s grand old names. Among the products that Singh is talking about is a revamped Messenger, one that he says will be launched in India. I ask him for a timeframe. Soon, is all he will say.

In my hour-long discussion with Singh, details on launches or strategy were at a premium. But talking to him, it is clear that Mayer’s two years at Sunnyvale has perked up the enthusiasm levels at Yahoo India. Singh’s team is happy to give me the numbers: Yahoo India is one of the country’s top two sites for news, finance, and sports, and the top one for entertainment news. Yahoo Mail is the country’s second-largest mail service. And there’s been a 25% growth in mobile users; today, half of Yahoo’s users access it on a mobile device.

It’s all very impressive for a name that’s now synonymous with ‘uncool’. But Singh is clear that Yahoo can’t be written off; it’s definitely among the big players. Its 25% growth in mobile users is distinctly underwhelming in light of the fact that this is in a market which had a 166.8% increase in smartphone sales in the fourth quarter of 2013, the highest among the countries tracked by technology research and advisory firm Gartner. For most new users in India, the device is the introduction to the Internet, and that’s something Singh is acutely aware of. He says Yahoo India’s partnerships with telecom service providers, along with a pipeline of refreshed products, should help.

One of the most important components of Yahoo India’s mobile strategy is its cricket app and the cricket content on its site. There’s been a two and a half times growth in traffic in the past one year, most of it coming from mobile. Beefing this up is priority, and Yahoo’s partnership with ESPNcricinfo, a specialist cricket website, should help. “There’s so much on the plate,” says Singh, who was chief executive of Forbes India before joining Yahoo. But he’s not planning to bite off more than he can chew; in the techie community, Yahoo is known to flatter to deceive, and Singh doesn’t want that reputation to continue.