LinkedIn names Nishant K Rao as country manager, India

With this, Rao, who until now was director, business operations and head of global sales strategy at LinkedIn's Mountain View office, will replace Hari V Krishnan. Krishnan, meanwhile, will now move into a larger role as managing director, Asia Pacific and Japan.

With an enhanced focus on scaling up its India operations, LinkedIn, the professional social networking site headquartered in Mountain View, California, has named Nishant K Rao as country manager.

With this, Rao, who until now was director, business operations and head of global sales strategy at LinkedIn's Mountain View office, will replace Hari V Krishnan. Krishnan, meanwhile, will now move into a larger role as managing director, Asia Pacific and Japan.

Speaking on the appointment, Rao says, "With a member base of 18 million professionals, India is one of our fastest growing markets and the largest outside of the US. Indian marketers and recruiters are fast realising the potential of LinkedIn's affluent member base and are leveraging the platform for targeted and thought leadership-oriented campaigns. I am excited about the opportunity to work with the LinkedIn India team to serve our customers and members in India."

Rao has been with LinkedIn since September, 2011. He has more than 10 years of experience across sales, strategy management and entrepreneurship. He has held leadership positions with companies such as McKinsey and ARIBA Inc. and was also one of the founding members of Epicentre Technologies - one amongst India's first call centres.

Rao holds an MBA in strategy, entrepreneurship, marketing and international business from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and also holds a B.S (Bachelor of Science) degree in computer science from the University of Texas, Austin.

Meanwhile, in his new role, Krishnan will relocate to the company's Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore. Opened in May 2011, LinkedIn's Singapore office acts as a hub for its regional sales and marketing, member engagement, strategic regional partnerships and general operations for all of Asia.

Krishnan succeeds Arvind Rajan, who has moved into the role of managing director and vice-president, new markets, which will be focused on evaluating new market opportunities across the globe.

Krishnan joined LinkedIn India in January, 2009 as country manager. This was the first appointment by Linkedin.com for its India operations. Prior to joining LinkedIn, Krishnan was country manager, MySpace.com (India), a social networking portal owned by Fox Interactive Media. He joined MySpace.com in November, 2008.

He is a telecom engineer and holds an MBA degree from INSEAD (France). He started his career with Cisco Systems in the US, where he worked for five years.

In 2006, Krishnan moved to India and worked with Yahoo! as head of business development and strategy. Subsequently, he moved to Travelguru.com as vice-president, corporate planning and marketing, and was responsible for all of the company's brand marketing and product development activities.