By Rashi Bisaria
Google India’s growth has been parallel to the growth of Internet in India, says Rajan Anandan, Managing Director of Google India. He talks about digitally empowering small and medium businesses, getting more companies to advertise online and Google’s strategy for bringing relevant ad solutions to marketers
Stepping into Google’s Gurgaon office is like energizing oneself. The colourful office interiors and the casually clad employees exude positive energy that can easily rub off on anyone who enters the space for the first time. Google is changing the way people live their lives, making Internet useful to those who have access to it, and helping businesses come online. The growth of Google has been parallel to the growth of Internet in India and today, the Internet giant is trying to make a difference to people’s lives. Making Internet useful for Indians is the stated objective of Rajan Anandan, Vice President and Managing Director, Google India, who is buoyant about the potential of the Internet and Google’s role in making it the go-to place for marketers.
When Anandan joined Google in 2011, India had just crossed 100 million Internet users. In three years, the number has gone up to 200 million users in the country. What is noteworthy is how Google has gone from having a business centred around performance clients to a rapidly growing Small and Medium Business (SMB) segment. By the end of 2013, Google India was the largest growing SMB market in the whole of Google. Today, thousands of new advertisers are added every month. But as Anandan says, “There’s a lot of change, but in many ways we have not even begun.”
Of late, Google has launched initiatives for small businesses and they have become a key focus area for it. “India has 47 million businesses, and obviously most of them are small businesses, but only 150,000 businesses advertise. There are 10,000 businesses in India that advertise on Television and around 7000 that advertise on Radio. Until the advent of Digital and now Mobile, small businesses never had the ability to invest on performance focused mediums,” he says. The focus for Google now is to get millions of businesses in India to advertise online. Google is also focusing on establishing Digital as a brand building medium. “People perceive Digital as a performance-based medium. Online platforms like YouTube can significantly impact brand matrix by delivering significant reach. So, establishing Digital as a brand-building medium is a huge priority for us,” he adds.
He further explains, “With Digital you have the benefits of sight, sound and motion like Television but it also provides additional benefits of engagement, sharing and measurement. Online, if you post an ad on YouTube, you can immediately see how many people watched it or shared it. Now we are launching tools where once a viewer watches an ad, the impact on brand matrix can be measured.”
INTERNET MADE SIMPLE
Google has launched several initiatives to encourage and support entrepreneurs in the country. The ‘Helping Women Get Online’ was one such initiative. Considering that only one-third of India’s online users are women, Google launched this campaign in partnership with Intel, HUL and Axis Bank to help 50 million women get online in one year. The initiative focused on creating awareness about the benefits of Internet for women, educate women to use the Internet to improve their lives and work with partners to enable easy Internet access points for women in the country. In the first stage of the initiative, Google launched a mass media campaign targeted at women and promoted it through a specially designed website. Prior to the launch, Google India successfully conducted a digital literacy pilot programme in the villages of Bhilwara in Rajasthan, which covered girl students in the age group of 13 to 18, housewives and working women. Basic Internet training content was created in Hindi to help the women understand how they can use the Internet in their day-to-day lives. The activity panned across two-and-a-half months, covering over 300 educational institutes, 500 households, 50+ villages and Bhilwara town.
BOOSTING INDIAN BUSINESSES
The ‘Get India Business Online’ initiative is a step by the Internet giant to give a boost to Indian businesses. With over 200 million Internet users in the country and growing, India is on its way to becoming the second largest Internet market in the world, overtaking the US by 2015. The advent of affordable smartphones is also bringing more users online. This surge in Internet user base is changing the way consumers look for local business information, which provides a great opportunity for small businesses to reach new customers online. Studies conducted by Google and FICCI have shown that SMBs that use the web fare much better than those that do not. SMBs that use the Internet report 51% higher revenues and 49% more profit than their offline-only counterparts, on an average. (Source: FICCI & Nathan Associates report)
Google aims to help small businesses get online and connect with customers through initiatives such as the AdWords Express (a platform specifically designed for small businesses that makes it easy for them to run advertising campaigns online) and Google+ pages (which help businesses connect and share information with customers and fans). Google also helps SMBs to go mobile. “Mobile use is growing tremendously, and it is important for small businesses to have a site that’s easy to navigate on a mobile device. We offer help and some tools through our partners who can help SMBs to build mobile landing pages so that their customers can find what they want more quickly, for example, store hours and contact info, etc.,” says Anandan.
Another India-specific initiative for start-ups taken up by Anandan was in association with Nasscom, called ‘Nasscom 10,000 Start-ups’. The objective was to create 10,000 Indian Mobile start-ups in India over the next decade. India, where three million people work in the IT sector, has only 150 mobile start-ups while the USA is at 15,000.
“To make Internet more useful, we have to innovate at the local level and most of them have to come from Indian start-ups or Indian entrepreneurs. For instance, Red Bus is a great Indian innovation. India has 5,000 bus operators and getting a bus is very difficult. So you have a platform called Red Bus,” explains Anandan, stressing on the importance of innovation.
When asked if Google has already begun playing an important role in bringing about social change in India, Anandan was optimistic, saying, “Our belief is that the Internet can make the world a better place. In India, we certainly believe that the Internet can dramatically improve many aspects of the consumer’s lives or business future.”
In the face of India’s digital revolution, Google is trying to bring about holistic growth, and Rajan Anandan is all geared to take the growth to the next level.
GREAT ONLINE SHOPPING FESTIVAL
The Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF) was created by Google India on December 12, 2012 in collaboration with several shopping portals offering shoppers huge discounts. The concept, inspired by Cyber Monday in the US, aimed to encourage people to shop online. The first GOSF in 2012 was a one-day event. In 2013, it was held over three days, bringing together over 240 e-commerce websites, and after crossing one million users on the first day, it was extended by another day.
GOOGLE ELECTIONS HUB
During the Lok Sabha elections, Google India launched a hub called Politics & Elections. With advanced tools, the hub enabled users to stay informed and engaged with access to trends, infographics and YouTube election playlists. Other features included:
Pledge To Vote: Using the Google Maps tool, users shared their pledge to vote and could view pledges of other citizens across the country.
Google Score: This tool reflected the activity generated for a candidate in 24 hours combing Google and YouTube search results with engagement on Google+.
Hangouts: Google organized discussions with several politicians including Arun Jaitley, Arvind Kejriwal, P Chidambaram and Narendra Modi over the months leading to the elections.
YOUTUBE FANFEST IN INDIA
Over the last few years, YouTube has made Internet celebrities out of several Indians. The YouTube FanFest in association with HP allowed fans to interact with their favourite YouTube personalities. It included live performances, interviews and meet and greets.
INDIA GET YOUR BUSINESS ONLINE
As part of their efforts to make Indians aware of the benefits of Internet use, Google India launched the ‘India Get Your Business Online’ initiative. As part of this, small and medium businesses were offered a .in domain name and free hosting for a year. The initiative was based on the learning that small and medium businesses that have an online presence grow 50%
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