Google, despite accounting for a bulk of online ad sales in India, is now pushing for increasing the revenues from its Indian operations; this is a push that has come following a change in personnel at the top: Rajan Anandan, a former Microsoft India MD and currently VP ( Sales & Operations) at Google has been aggressively making the case for a growth in online advertising since taking over from Shailesh Rao as the Head of India operations less than three months ago. Anandan's presentation, titled 'India@100' at India's first Ad:Tech conference was focused on impressing an audience expected to be largely comprised of advertisers and media planners, with numbers portraying increase in Internet usage in India. He first declared that the company believes that there are 100 million Internet users in India, and followed that up with statements like: "in the SEC A and B age group 15-34, there are 33 million people in India; almost all of them are actually online, and they're spending more time online than on any other medium", "this 100 million may be the 100 million that you really want" and a rather animated "it's a big number, it's a biiiig deal." Sitting in the hall at AdTech, I kept getting the feeling that I've come across these numbers before: Anandan had made a similar presentation at Goa Fest (a report at Campaign India), again to an audience comprising of the advertising fraternity. It appears (from this tweet) that he has made another such…
