Yahoo’s new R&D hub in B’lore

BANGALORE: Yahoo has announced the launch of its software development center in India. The center, which has been functioning for some time in Bangalore, will move to new premises by next month and should have 150 software engineers by end of 2004, according to the company.

“This will be the only R&D center operating out of the US. Our businesses and services over our entire range of marketing, listings, transactions and fees based activities are growing by the day and this facility will aid in bringing out better services and products for these growing segments,” said, Yahoo Software Development India CEO Venkat Panchapakesan.

“The facility will focus on varied areas of product innovation apart from adding on to existing products and services. One of the important focuses of the company will be technology evolution concentrating on various areas including data engineering and analysis and security models,” said Yahoo Software Development India COO Bharat Vijay.

The center, which will function independently from Yahoo India portal services, will also work on areas of data mining, data engineering, e-commerce, search, network services, classifieds platform, consumer and enterprise services. Data mining especially, said Vijay, could prove exceedingly useful for Yahoo to track and understand consumer usage patterns, likes and dislikes, thereby aiding the company in developing better products and services.

According to Panchapakesan, the center might grow to being the pre-eminent R&D center that delivers business critical solutions for Yahoo world over. He added that the Bangalore center, though working in co-ordination with the US for the most, would most likely wholly develop products in the future. He also stressed that the workforce would be locally hired and there would be no shifting of jobs from the US.

(CNS)