core sector communique

Google strengthens its SME focus in India Backed by the strong demand for digital advertising from small and medium sized businesses in India, Google India today announced the launch of a Premier SME Partner program in India. Through this program, Google India aims to maximize its reach to small and medium sized businesses spread across the country and help them by providing specialised services to grow their businesses through digital advertising. Google’s Premier SME Partners will be trained to offer the highest level of expertise and proficiency in developing, launching and managing digital campaigns for small and medium sized businesses. These partners will offer end-to-end marketing solutions like search engine marketing, localised marketing solutions across Google properties and mobile advertising platform. Google will invest in helping partners with dedicated marketing and sales support that includes direct access to Google, co branded market collateral, market research, training, offers (incentivized sales model), technical and operational support, assigned account manager and joint sales pitches. Speaking on the launch of the program in India, Rajan Anandan Managing Director & VP Sales, Google India, said “India is a hotbed of small medium sized businesses and digital advertising lends itself well to help these businesses grow and compete at equal footing with large established players online. Our SME business has seen phenomenal growth in India, making us the fastest growing SME market for Google globally. With the launch of this program, we want to expand our reach by recruiting 30 new partners across India by end of next year, so that more and more SME can benefit from a direct engagement with a Google-trained professional.” “India is a strategic market for Google, and we will continue to invest in other capacity building initiative through our existing Google Engage platform, which is focused on training and supporting businesses that specialize in helping other SME succeed online.” he added. Google India has already shortlisted six such premier partners and has been working with them to help them ramp up their sales force through training programs. These partners include Sokrati from Pune, Getit from Delhi, O3M Directional Marketing from Chennai, Effective Responses from Delhi, AdGlobal 360 from Delhi and ISPG technologies from Bengaluru. K.G.Sreejith, Director – Online Marketing at ISPG Technologies, a full service agency based in Bangalore, said, “We find the premier partnership program helps us to build our capacity in meeting the requirement of small and medium business enterprises in India. SMEs in India have limited budgets for their marketing and they need help of trained professionals who can help them to achieve high ROI on that investment. has very high expectation in terms of ROI. Google’s advertising solution have very low entry cost and even Rs.300-400 per day spend can get good returns. Being a Premier Partner, we have also gained good traction with our customers with the joint workshops and events that Google has been hosting for SME customers across India.” Google Premier SME Partner program is a global initiative of Google and is operational in 37 countries worldwide. To find out more about the program - please log onto Google AdWords Premier SME Partner Program