Google banks on SMEs for India expansion

NEW DELHI - World’s most-used web search tool Google is planning to expand in nearly 30 cities across the country by offering services in eight regional languages within a year to cater to the needs of small businesses.

Our focus is now on small businesses. They are the main driver of our growth. We are doubling our business every year in this segment, Sridhar Seshadri, head of online sales of Google India, told IANS.

He said within six months Google would start offering support services in nine Indian languages - Hindi, Telgu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati and Oriya.

The company has already started offering regional language support in four south Indian languages - Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam - from its Hyderabad office.

We have already started internal works on other four major languages - Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati and Oriya. Within six months we will be offering services in these languages also, he said.

Of over 35 million small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India, just a million are online. There is a huge untapped market. We are working with other institutions to help SMEs go online and expand their business, said Seshadri, adding Google would offer customised services to small businesses that suit their size and specific requirements.

Google has launched a new learning and training programme called Google Engage - which is designed to help individuals and businesses engaged in offering web-related services.

Google Wednesday launched a new call centre in Hyderabad that will manage both inbound and outbound calls in six languages, including English and Hindi, to help small medium entrepreneurs manage advertising campaigns online and grow their businesses using Google’s advertising platform ‘AdWords’.

Google AdWords platform which completed 10 years this month has empowered over a million small and medium businesses globally to gain from search engine advertising, Seshadri said.