Make Tamil Nadu a hot spot of online shopping: Raja
Special Correspondent
eBay, PayPal launch Global Development Centre in Chennai
— Photo: M. Vedhan
going global: Union Minister for Communication and Information Technology A. Raja with PayPal’s chief technology officer Scott Thompson at the inauguration of the Global Development centre in Chennai on Monday. (From right) ebay development centre general manager Sriram Samu and PayPal global product development vice-president Raj Sundaresan, are in the picture.
CHENNAI: E-commerce giant eBay Inc and its online payment subsidiary PayPal opened their Global Development Centre in Chennai on Monday.
Union Minister for Communication and Information Technology A. Raja inaugurated the facility at the Futura IT Park at Sholinganallur. This is PayPal’s first such centre outside the United States, and eBay’s second.
“The setting up of this centre further reiterates India’s frontrunner status in the global IT scenario,” said Mr. Raja.
He urged the entrepreneurs of Tamil Nadu to make the State a hot spot for online shopping, as it was already a hub for the software industry.
Online transactions
This year’s Deepavali alone is likely to involve more than 30 lakh online consumers across India, he said. The annual e-commerce turnover was expected to rise 150 per cent to Rs.5,500 crore in the current financial year.
Reducing the time to reach the local Indian market is one of the reasons eBay and PayPal set up this new centre in India, according to Raj Sundaresan, vice-president of PayPal Global Product Development. PayPal currently does not support domestic services for the Indian market, although it eventually plans to do so.
The new centre, which already employs 1000 people, is largely focussed on product development, financial and risk analytics and product management.
It can house 2500 people, and will continue to aggressively hire “hundreds of new people” over the next two years, according to PayPal’s chief technology officer Scott Thompson.
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