When Yahoo 360o Taiwan was launched on Nov. 14, the Yahoo Software Development Centre Limited, at Bangalore received an email alert at mid-night with the message “Hey, Taiwan blog is up”. The Center had been working on developing and running Yahoo blogs across continents. The message was an indication of appreciation, ownership and pride for the team, which manages Yahoo blogs around the world.

The development center in Bangalore is the epicenter for Yahoo’s 360o blog for the U.S., South Korea and Taiwan. Each blog is unique in its own way as they blend the global image of Yahoo and a country’s culture, audience requirements and functionality to cater to a diverse set of users. “It was a challenge, for our team to think out-of-the box and yet meet the market requirement of Taiwan,” says Venkat Panchapakesan, Chief Executive Officer, Yahoo Software Development India. Arising with the challenge the team visited the country several times researching and gathering data for a better understanding of the requirements.

Yahoo Bangalore does not only develop blogs but also Podcasts for this Internet service provider. Podcasts are radio shows hosted via the Internet. “A user can listen online, download and subscribe to Podcasts by downloading our software. Once subscribed new shows are automatically downloaded to the subscriber’s system,” says Panchapakesan.
With heavy R&D work belted out of Yahoo Bangalore, the company has already received 10 patents in the year 2005 with a bunch still pending. While the development side of the company is hot with new applications, product engineering at Yahoo Bangalore is focused toward classifieds, vertical search and desktop search. “The desktop search is not restricted to a PC alone but also on mobile phones, laptop or on a browser,” he says.

Yahoo Bangalore also boasts of exclusive research teams, which have helped in developing products for the company. “In our pure research team we have around 10 Ph. Ds who work in tandem with professors at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and New Delhi and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore to develop new algorithms,” Panchapakesan says.

While one of the teams focuses on developing new algorithms, another works to convert into products, these teams come from both Yahoo and other companies. “The company believes in industry-academia trend for growth,” he adds.