Bullish about business in India: Google India

Excerpts from India Business Hour on CNBC-TV18 Watch the full show » RELATED NEWS Google delays open access to new Android software Yahoo revamps Web search, plans new ad formats

Internet major Google lost the tender to broadcast live IPL matches on the internet to Indiatimes. Speaking exclusively to CNBC-TV18's Kritika Saxena, Google India head Sailesh Rao says that the loss will not have an impact on the YouTube's revenues from India. Not just that, Google expects the India market to drive growth in the coming years.

Here is a verbatim transcript of the exclusive interview with Sailesh Rao on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: What are your expansion plans for India?

A: I think there are three reasons why we continue to be bullish about India. One, the internet in India is growing rapidly. Four years ago, the internet usage was less than 30 million people. Today, it is anywhere between 80 to 100 million and there are 10s of million mobile internet users.

Secondly, the country is a big country and we see this only expanding further. Third, we have enjoyed tremendous success in terms of users taking up our products and advertisers using our platforms to advertise to those users.

Q: What about headcount increase? In the next one year is there a number chartered out? We have heard about Google increasing hiring, what is the plan right now? If you can tell us, will you be looking at giving out significant pay hikes and promotions since Google is expected to be pretty good pay masters?

A: We always focus on hiring great talent and there is plenty of great talent in India. We constantly are looking across the board and across our functions for great people to join Google India. We would continue to do so.

Q: Now that you don't have the IPL contract, do you expect this to hurt operations as far as YouTube is concerned?

A: No, users still enjoy YouTube. We continue to see growth in usage on YouTube in India, so we expect that to continue. We have a team that engages in a daily effort to reach out to partners who have video content that we know users want. So, our focus is very broad based, education, lifestyle, women's issues, sports, movies, television, it covers a range of things. We will continue those efforts as we have always done.