India’s ‘hungry’ market fuels optimism for LinkedIn’s expansion: Asia chief

According to the regional manager of the American corporation, LinkedIn, there are more job chances in India and Indonesia as ambitious young professionals strive to use the platform to gain skills and find employment. For a network with roughly 875 million users worldwide, LinkedIn already has over 96 million members in India, which competes with China for the title of most populous nation, and 21 million members in Indonesia, the fourth most populated nation.

As it prepares the Indonesian-language translation of its e-learning content for release next year, it now seeks to further enter the two rising markets by targeting second- and third-tier Indian cities. “In a recent interview in Tokyo, Feon Ang, LinkedIn’s managing director for Asia Pacific and Japan, stated, “We’re noticing that members in India engage a lot more on our platform. They “are constantly looking for opportunities and learning from the platform.”

LinkedIn is also used by businesses to locate talent for recruiting. “Companies will require a lot more talent as India’s economy expands and more businesses locate there, and they will need to develop a retention plan to ensure that people feel invested, which implies that they are providing learning chances for their staff, according to Ang. According to the Asian Development Bank’s most recent economic outlook, India’s economy would increase by 7.2% in 2023, making it one of the world’s fastest-growing markets. Young professionals in the nation are “eager for advancement,” she claimed, which results in strong participation on the site.

She claimed that LinkedIn has already been “extremely successful” in the nation’s tier-1, or major, cities like Mumbai, where it has about 100 million members out of a population of approximately 1.4 billion. She mentioned Kolkata and Pune, two cities in the country’s east and west, respectively, and stated, “As we move into tier-2 and tier-3 cities [we are] beginning to pick up a lot of momentum as well.” “We’re starting to see a lot more activities, a lot more companies demanding services like LinkedIn, to hire people and to make learning available for employees as the country is very heavy on the tech sector,” she said, adding that LinkedIn’s technology-related learning courses satisfy these requirements.

Users in India and Indonesia exhibit “very comparable behaviour,” according to Ang. The nation’s workforce is youthful and expanding, and international companies are investing heavily in Southeast Asia’s largest economy. In the April to June quarter, LinkedIn will begin providing its online learning courses with automatically translated subtitles as part of its Indonesia expansion strategy, she said. In the Asia-Pacific region’s developed economies, the trend of government-led workers, according to Ang, reskilling will be a major factor in the company’s success.

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Fumio Kishida, the prime minister of Japan, has made upgrading and gaining new skills a key component of his economic strategy and has urged people to adopt new fields like digital and green technology. “According to Ang, the Japanese prime minister is keen to ensure that the populace in his country recognises the value of up- and reskilling. Therefore, we believe that there is a tremendous opportunity for us in terms of what LinkedIn can provide for the people of Japan.

In Japan, the third-largest economy in the world with over 125 million people, LinkedIn has about 3 million subscribers. She stated that the business intended to collaborate with more businesses to provide training programmes for their staff. She also added that it encourages graduates from universities to have a LinkedIn presence. According to financial reports from Microsoft, LinkedIn’s fiscal year that concluded in June 2022 saw a total revenue increase of 34% to $13.8 billion. But Ang agreed that an anticipated global economic slowdown would have an effect on hiring rates and would have an impact on LinkedIn’s operations.

“Companies constantly need workers to support the expansion of their businesses,” She spoke. “They are therefore looking at new, in-demand talents like data analytics, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence. There will always be a requirement for human resources and these will continue to be the abilities that are in demand.”