Internet giant Yahoo! Inc has strengthened its research and development activities in India by setting up a new research and development (R&D) lab in Bangalore.

First of its kind in India, ‘Yahoo! Labs – Bangalore’ will concentrate on next-generation search and multimedia retrieval products for its worldwide customers

Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice-president and head of Yahoo! Research said, “Yahoo Labs Bangalore intends to build a world-class team focused on delivering the most valuable insights and leading-edge technologies to delight all of our customers worldwide.”

Initially, the new laboratory will have a team of 100 scientists and engineers. The company has nominated, Rajeev Rastogi, a former Bell Labs director as vice-president and head of the new lab.
 
“As Yahoo! sixth lab worldwide and first in Asia, the Bangalore centre will focus on software for information extraction, multimedia and query processing,” Mr.  Raghavan added.

The company has not yet disclosed the financial details regarding the investment being made in setting up the lab.

Yahoo!’s five other labs are situated in Silicon Valley, New York and Burbank in California (US), Santiago in Chile and Barcelona in Spain.
 
Mr. Raghavan also said, “The India lab will work in tandem with other labs in the US. While the R&D centre will write software codes for various functions, the lab will develop products for data base, index-based search and matching content for seamless view by users as well as advertisers.”