"Our priority is to position Yahoo! products amongst younger users": Nitin Mathur, Yahoo!

Yahoo! has seen a major change recently with the introduction of a new logo after 15 years and redesigns of existing products. However, in Yahoo! India headquarters, things have not been as smooth, as the company has seen a senior level exodus and relocation. The company, meanwhile, claims that it is a normal process and with the repositioning of the brand, there are a lot of new things afloat. afaqs! spoke to Nitin Mathur, senior director and head of marketing, India and Southeast Asia, Yahoo! Inc. to understand how Yahoo! looks at the India opportunity.

Edited Excerpts

We need to recognise the fact that overall attrition in the company has come down by over 60 per cent in the last one year. Yes, we have had few leadership changes in India but it also allows us to bring in new blood, and people with fresh perspective to Yahoo!, who are truly passionate about users, and advertisers.

India is a critical market for us and we will invest in leadership here. We are looking for a country manager in India, and we are thrilled by the quality of candidates we have in the fray.

India is very important for Yahoo!, particularly from an audience perspective. Today, we reach over 60 per cent of the internet audience in the country. Our content sites like Cricket, Finance, News, Lifestyle and OMG are hugely popular and the Yahoo! network has seen 3X growth in a little over two years. Our communication properties like Mail, Messenger and Flickr are in the top three in their respective categories.

What makes India even more exciting is that it is a market of young users - people who are perpetually plugged in, who use more than one device, and for whom the mobile phone is a connection to their own world. Mail, Search, Photosharing are important activities, as is their desire for entertainment content.

A strong focus on mobile has really been the biggest priority for us in the last one year. You've seen how India has taken to mobile, across cities and towns. In urban India, the move towards smartphones and connected devices has been tremendous. Our vision is to make our users' daily habits more inspiring and entertaining, and to that end rich, cross-screen experiences are incredibly important in India.

Over the past year, we've been giving our products a fresh look and feel and we have evolved as a company - our new logo reflects our personality, enthusiasm and innovation.

If you see our new logo, you will notice that we have stayed true to our roots (whimsical, purple, with an exclamation point) yet embraced the evolution of our products.

We are constantly innovating to provide a better experience for our users and this is just one additional step in that process. We heard from users that our logo could better reflect the renewed energy and focus of the company. This new logo will align with our more sophisticated design aesthetic. It captures where we are as a company and our aspirations for the future.

It's true that we have a strong tech presence in India. Our Bengaluru centre is the second largest R&D centre for Yahoo! globally and it continues to be integral to the entire product development at Yahoo!. But that does not mean that the India market is not a priority for us anymore.

As I said earlier, India is an incredibly important emerging market for Yahoo!. For two reasons - one is the size of the internet population; it has today crossed over a 100 million and is estimated to reach over 230 million by 2015; and the second is that majority users are young, between 15-24 years. It makes this market very exciting for us - and we definitely want to grow our engagement with users here.

In terms of our larger business model, we continue to focus on advertising revenues. We are a leader in display advertising in India, and marquee brands leverage the Yahoo! network and our comprehensive portfolio of advertising solutions to announce their new launches, big campaigns and engage with their specific audience set. Brands from across verticals advertise on the Yahoo! platform - Samsung, Volkswagen, P&G, Garnier, Perfetti, Maruti, Kotak Mahindra, LG, e-commerce players to name a few.

At Yahoo!, our plan was to approach the new strategy in phases, starting first with people - getting the right talent and making it a great place to work. This was followed by focusing on bringing out some great products and growing our traffic and users. In that sense, we have had a great year.

We have grown our global mobile base from 200 million last year to 350 million in about a year's time. We have been getting a lot done on the mobile front in India as well, and a clear indication of success is that there has been a 54 per cent jump YoY on the mobile traffic on the Yahoo! network in India. Today, 50 per cent of our traffic actually comes from mobile users. Properties like Yahoo! Cricket have seen almost a 3X jump in mobile traffic. Even experiences like OMG have seen almost a 100 per cent jump in mobile traffic.

Our mobile products are driving huge growth for the company, delighting our users and also attracting new users. Our products are winning innovation awards (our Weather app won the Apple Design Award) and Yahoo! is quickly becoming a hot place to work in mobile. If you look at our progress in the last three months, we surpassed Google's website traffic in the US, we reached a milestone of 800 million monthly active users, unveiled our new logo and continued with the slew of product launches and updates that puts our users first and makes their daily routines truly delightful.

For any emerging market, quite clearly the goal of marketing is to facilitate share shift. Digital spend of advertising dollars in India is anywhere between 5-7 per cent, abysmally lower than the global average of 20 per cent. In certain markets like the UK, it has reached over 30 per cent. Japan spends $9 billion on mobile advertising alone. So there is a huge head room to grow the overall category in India.

The other goal of marketing is to clearly position Yahoo! products amongst younger users who mostly access internet from mobile. We have a terrific re-invigorated product set, and we want to make sure users experience them.

Yahoo! will continue to operate Tumblr independently as a separate business unit, and will help Tumblr with resources to help them reach their vision sooner.

You have heard Marissa (Mayer) talk about the kind of fit that Tumblr has with Yahoo!. When we combine Tumblr with Yahoo!, we end up with more than a billion monthly visitors. Yahoo!'s audience of 800 million users grows by over 50 per cent and our traffic grows by 20 per cent. Tumblr users are the youngest on the internet, and we are focusing on strengthening our brand with younger users. We are strong in sports, finance and news. They are strong in art, architecture, fashion, food, travel, and more. Their biggest need is around discovery and search. Our personalisation and search technologies can help them immensely. We need great tools for content creation and publishing. They have them. So at a global level it is a great fit.