San-Francisco based web and mobile application Pinterest is looking forward for global expansion and is eyeing India and Southeast Asia next. The USA unicorn valued at over $12 billion allows users to create virtual pinboards and discover information on the World Wide Web.
The platform currently claims to have 250 million monthly active users, half of them outside the US. Almost 80% of the company’s new users are from international markets.
“Last few years, we have focused on South America, Western Europe and a bit on Japan. This year we are increasingly thinking about Southeast Asia, India and other parts of the world we haven’t serviced,” co-founder Evan Sharp stated.
Pinterest has launched seven offices in international markets. Along with this, it had also introduced the Hindi language on the platform four years back for the purpose of localizing the product for the Indian market.
Sharp, who is also chief product officer at Pinterest claimed that the people will hear more about India and Southeast Asia in the next 12 months. Since a few years, India has been one of the major markets to drive user growth for US-based social platforms.
These platforms include Quora, Twitter and Facebook that also owns Instagram and WhatsApp. However, monetization or revenue per user in markets like India remains a fraction of the developed markets. Also, the unicorn is planning a public offering and also stepped up monetization through its “Shop the Look” feature to small and medium businesses.
Pinterest is looking forward to an aggressive expansion plan and has secured funding of $1.5 billion from top Silicon Valley investors for the purpose.