LinkedIn Crosses 13 Million Members Mark In India

LinkedIn India has crossed the 13 million members mark and the Indians now comprise the second largest user base for LinkedIn in the world (behind USA), according to Hari Krishnan, country manager at LinkedIn in India.

While the site has been there for Indian users to register themselves and use, Indian operations was launched in November 2009. The site had around 3.4 million users in 2009 and has added almost 10 million users since then. In June it had crossed the milestone of 10 million registered users in India so it has added around 3 million users in the past six months.

According to Krishnan, "Scaling up our India operations is a key focus area for us. We already have three Sales and marketing offices in the country; one each in Mumbai, Gurgaon and Bangaluru."

The company also recently launched a technology centre in Bangaluru that is headed by Ganesh Krishnan, who was previously a senior director of engineering and security at the company's headquarter. While the Mumbai and Bangalore offices have a combined strength of 50+ employees, the Bengaluru technology centre currently has around 30 engineers.

The company had recently brought on board Hetal Sonpal as director, strategic sales, for its India operations. Sonpal was earlier with Microsoft Corporation as lead, telecom alliances and his mandate will involve working closely with LinkedIn's marketing solutions and hiring solutions team.

Back in October, LinkedIn had announced the LinkedIn Talent Pipeline that will create a centralised place for recruiters to manage all the leads which they gather through LinkedIn, to streamline lead generation and follow-up. Krishnan mentioned that although the LinkedIn Talent Pipeline is still in closed beta as of now, it will be launched shortly.