As the world rapidly divides itself between Microsoft and Google, one man has managed to cross the chasm. Rajan Anandan, who left Microsoft India in January to join Google India as managing director, speaks to Suveen K Sinha about his mission to increase internet adoption with his new company’s pet tool – and his old company’s pet peeve – of openness. Edited Excerpts:
How did you do the unthinkable?
Why do you call it unthinkable?
Didn’t Google view you with suspicion?
Thinking that I would be a spy (laughs)?
Well, when at Microsoft, you could be badmouthing Google in your watercooler moments.
I do not badmouth competitors. It (the switch to Google) is all about imagination; what more could you do!
Ok. What more can you do?
India is at an inflection point. At the end of last year, 2010, the country crossed 100 million internet users. That makes it third after China (600 million) and the US (300 million). The average internet user spends 16 hours a week online. That is more than 14 hours a week for television.
Why is this an inflection point?
There are two ways to monetise it: Advertising and e-commerce. In 2010, online advertising crossed Rs 1,000 crore (four per cent of the overall advertising pie) and is growing at 50 per cent. As much as 81 per cent of e-commerce is air tickets. Still, only 30 per cent of air tickets are booked online. That leaves a lot of room for growth. Our target is to push this 100 million to 300 million by 2015. By that time, online advertising should increase to Rs 5,000 crore.
But it won’t be easy, right?
We need unlimited access (to the internet) at a much lower price (than now), and low-cost devices. The journey from 100 million to 200 million will also be driven by mobile internet users (40 million at present). But they will need things to do with their devices.
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That will require content.
Yes, local content and content in local languages. The government can play a big role in this with government-centric services. Of the one million schools, less than 50,000 have IT laboratories. The first thing you can do in your own language is education.
But many parents, who can afford to send their children to a school with an IT lab, may also want the medium of education to be English.
No, many schools teaching in local languages can have IT labs. Then, we will need applications by startups. The government can promote an entrepreneurial eco-system.
What can Google do?
We can provide low-cost access and devices. We have Android, which is free, easy to access and easy to use.
But difficult to make money from.
Our focus is not on monetising it; the aim is to create users. There is so much local content on YouTube, which has 20 million unique users in India. Very few people know that in a way, if YouTube was taken to be like television watching, we would be the 11th largest network in the 15-44 age group in SEC A and B.
But to increase internet usage as you foresee it, you need to go beyond YouTube.
You know about our voice search. We also have other tools, like a transliteration tool that helps with local language content. We have gone to the HRD ministry about wiring up schools with IT labs. The biggest cost there is hardware. With Android and Chrome OS, we can deliver super-low-cost hardware. In e-commerce, we can get consumers to those sites. In mobile, Android will drive adoption.
But India has proved to be a weak subscription market. So you need to depend on advertising and e-commerce.
Subscription will evolve. Indians like to pay small amounts.
Are you also looking to provide cloud-based services to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), on the lines of what Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) announced recently?
Yes, it is a big opportunity. There are 35 million SMEs in India, of which 7 million can derive value from IT services. Just 1.8 million have even one PC. Less than 100,000 have legitimate software. We want to push state-of-the-art here. You may be aware that a Google engineer is allowed to spend 20 per cent of his working time on an area of his interest.
Really? Which are the notable gains from this?
Gmail was born because an engineer thought of it in his 20 per cent time. So was Google News.
How do you view the competition from Apple in smartphones?
Apple has done an amazing job in reinventing many things. But it’s not about products but strategy. Apple has a closed strategy. We have an open strategy. Time will tell.
Globally Google has got into solar energy and recently bought a music company. Do we expect to see Google getting into newer areas in India?
Solar is not our focus in India. Music is very interesting. Anything that is digital is very interesting. Solar is non-digital. But will Google become a music production company? No. Will we license music? Yes.
Social networking is not a very strong point with you, is it?
It is very important and growing. Facebook has done a great job. Our approach is evolving. Our strategy is to make all products more social. Orkut (owned by Google, overtaken by Facebook in India some months ago) still has 16 million users. Our strategy is to build social into everything. You may have heard of +1 (akin to Facebook’s ‘likes’). That’s our first move. It’s one of the things we will do to make your web experience even more social.
Google is no longer the world’s startup darling. Of late, it has been getting into several anti-trust issues. There has been the problem in China. Is there an image deficit?
In any global business, there will be issues that flare up. In China, some practices were not the ones that we subscribed to. If you are small and don’t matter to anyone, you have no problem. If you touch 2 billion lives, well… Anyway, I’d hate to be in a company no one cares about, talks about or writes about.
Your last big acquisition (travel search and recommendation company ITA) took nine months to come through.
It was a big acquisition. Small ones happen every week.