Developed in India LinkedIn Lite to launch in 60 countries

Professional networking platform, LinkedIn is in process to extend its ‘made in India’ product LinkedIn Lite to 60 other countries. According to the company, it tested LinkedIn Lite in some other countries and so far had experienced significant growth as far as user engagement is concerned.

The company has also announced rollout of a native LinkedIn Lite app to Android users in India. LinkedIn Lite is focuses to cater to tier II and III cities where people use lower-end handsets and have poor Internet connections.

"We have now been able to take all the LinkedIn experience and package into an app that is less than 1 MB,” said LinkedIn India head Akshay Kothari to ET tech. The app size is about 700KB and is slated to get launch to more than 60 countries shortly.

LinkedIn Lite works on 2G connections and claims to load 4X faster, across mobile platforms and devices. It also offers key features like news feed, jobs, profile, network, messaging, notifications, and search.

LinkedIn Lite was launched during LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner's visit to Bengaluru last year and is developed by the company's Bengaluru R&D unit.

Microsoft-owned company claims to see significant growth in number of users coming from tier II and III cities because of LinkedIn Lite. Over the past six months, the company has witnessed 2X surge in visitors hailing from mobile site with 3X jump in engagement.

Currently, LinkedIn has about 37 million users in India, nearly 10 per cent of its total users worldwide, making it the second largest after US. Besides, targeting working class, LinkedIn has been keeping sharp focus on students through India centric products like LinkedIn Placements.

According to the company, the initiative helped it to have more signups amongst student community. “Around two years ago, less than 10% of new signups were students but now they account for about a third of our signups,“ added Kothari.