Google India revenues jump 29 percent, profits rise 33 percent
Advertising contributes a huge 69 percent to Google's turnover with Google Search ads continuing to be the go-to place for digital advertisers in India.
That Google takes India seriously is well established by now. The search giant believes its “next billion users” will come out of fast-growing emerging markets, especially India, which houses the second largest internet population in the world.
Over the years, Google has undertaken several initiatives and programmes to increase adoption of the internet in India, and integrate its own products and services in everyday life. And, it has met with a fair amount of success too, as the numbers indicate.
Google India revenues are up 29 percent, and its profits have grown 33 percent in 2017-18, as per filings with the Registrar of Companies (RoC). Google garnered sales of Rs 9,338 crore in India in 2017-18 compared to Rs 7,239.5 crore the year before. In essence, Google has doubled its India business in three years since 2013-14.
Its advertising division accounted for a massive 69 percent of the turnover. Google Search ads continue to be the go-to place for digital advertisers in India. It is preferred over Facebook, which along with Google, commands nearly 80 percent of the digital advertising pie.
Facebook India's revenues were only about Rs 342 crore during the period, reflecting Google’s dominance in the industry.
Even as Google India ups its investments in vernacular, voice, and payments products, the company managed to grow its bottomline from Rs 306.6 crore in 2016-17 to Rs 407.2 crore in 2017-18.
At the ‘Google for India event’ held in August, Rajan Anandan, VP, India and SEA Sales and Operations, Google, identified “voice, video, and vernacular” as the three driving forces of the Indian internet. He said,
“Voice has been emerging as the preferred mode of use for new internet users. We’re seeing major growth of voice queries in India. Furthermore, online video now accounts for 75 percent of all mobile traffic. And as for vernacular, majority of the internet users today are Indian language users, a number expected to reach 500 million plus in the next two years.”
Recently, Google also rolled out an Indic language publishing platform, Navlekha, to bring India's 135,000 local language publishers online. Google will offer them free hosting, a branded domain for the first three years, and AdSense (its ad platform) support so that publishers can start monetising their content immediately.
In order to make the most of India’s vast — and ever-growing — regional language population, Google has also announced a Bilingual Feed that will curate news in English and Hindi. In the coming weeks, feeds in Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, and Malayalam will also be rolled out.