India is one of our more advanced markets

So what all is new at Yahoo! apart from the look and

the promotions?



We believe that it is not about the products, because there are enough of

them already existing. It about a new experience. We want to add a personal

relevance to the whole online experience. So while the products have evolved

gradually for us, we now want to give our consumers an integrated experience

where you dont have to jump to three different sites for your networking and

relations.

Yahoo! in the past has faced security glitches. So are

you doing anything on the security front?



We at Yahoo! give prime importance to individual security. We follow the

highest level security encryption, and almost everything happening in Yahoo! is

encrypted. Given that the Internet protocol is extremely flexible today, the

potential of security threats is quite big, but we try and deploy all the tools

for our consumers safety and privacy.

What are Yahoos India specific strategies?



In many respects, India is one of our more advanced markets. And we are

talking in terms of both penetration of the Internet, and the penetration of

data usage. With respect to India, we pay a lot of attention to improving our

mail in a low bandwidth environment. We are also working towards compression

technologies for video, since that is the emerging medium across the world. And

since that needs more bandwidth, it still hasnt caught up in India in a big

way.

Photo-sharing is another thing that is becoming quite

advanced in India. So that also is a big focus for us. And I think that once 3G

comes, it will go up further. We are also working very closely with our partners

for generating more and more local languages content.

In India, our mobile penetration is far higher than the

Internet reach. What are your mobile plans for India in this context?



We recognize that mobile Internet is one of the key opportunities in India.

And though the pricing of data plans, etc, is a restrictive factor as of now, we

expect a fairly dramatic fall in the data plan prices. Recognizing the potential

of mobile in India, we have formed partnerships with over 90% of the operating

carriers. However, people here still use mobile for core communication only. We

expect that trend to undergo a change.

More than half of the users that we will have in the next

three years are expected to come from the emerging markets alone, and a lot of

this will be mobile population. Mobile wise, India is our top most priority.

Mehak Chawla



mehakc@cybermedia.co.in