Google’s India revenues saw a big jump in the 2017-18 financial year, gaining traction from a higher 33 per cent rise in its advertisement income, even as the company continued to heavily invest in its cloud business.
Google India Private Limited posted a 29 per cent jump in its turnover at Rs9,338 crore for fiscal 2018 compared to a 22 per cent jump to Rs7,809 crore in the previous fiscal.
Google India, which gets most of its revenue from paid advertising, reported a 33 per cent increase in net income to Rs407 crore against Rs306 crore in the year ago period, as per its RoC filings.
While the US technology giant offers several internet-related services and products such as cloud computing and other software, nearly 69 per cent of the revenue is driven by the advertising service that displays ads along all search results.
But, with Google competing with Facebook for digital dominance, total expenses of Google India for the fiscal rose sharply to Rs8,700 crore against Rs6,700 crore in the previous fiscal.
The company, which employs over 5,000 professionals, developers, data scientists and engineers in India, also saw employee costs shooting up.
Google and Facebook command close 80 per cent of the entire digital advertising industry, which has been growing at almost 30 per cent over the last 5 years.
Google has been working to ensure internet penetration through easier access, faster loading and lighter search so that users can get answers quickly and pay less for data.
The internet giant also created a product, Google Station, for the Indian Railways. It now offers free service at 400 railway stations across India in collaboration with RailTel.