Baidu expands footprint in India by buying stakes in local companies

Baidu, China's largest search engine, may grow its presence in India by purchasing stakes in Zomato, BookMyShow, and BigBasket.

中国最大的搜索引擎——百度可能想通过入股Zomato、BookMyShow和BigBasket等三家电商创业公司，扩大在印度市场的影响力。

In an interview with the Times of India, Tim Yang, the general manager of Baidu India, said that the company has already had discussions with each company. A representative for Baidu confirmed that talks have taken place, but said the company can't give specific details about investment plans yet.

百度印度公司总经理蒂姆·杨在接受《印度时报》采访时表示，百度已经与上述三家公司进行了谈判。百度一位发言人证实，相关谈判已经进行，但表示该公司不便透露有关投资计划的任何具体细节。

Restaurant search and reservation site Zomato, ticket booking platform BookMyShow and online grocer BigBasket are all examples of O2O startups. O2O, which can stand for "online-to-offline" or "offline-to-online," is a catchall term for companies that focus on directing e-commerce traffic into brick-and-mortar businesses (or vice versa). Despite its silly acronym, O2O is a major priority for Chinese tech companies, especially those that want to grow their mobile businesses because a lot of O2O commerce is conducted through smartphone apps.

餐厅搜索与预订网站Zomato、机票预订平台BookMyShow以及在线百货商店BigBasket，均是O2O创业公司的典型代表。O2O是"线上到线下"或是"线下到线上"的意思，这个术语泛指那些专注于将电商流量导入实体业务的公司。O2O也是中国科技公司当前优先发展的业务 ，尤其是那些想要实现移动业务增长的公司，原因就在大量O2O商业活动都是通过智能手机应用进行的。

India is expected to overtake the United States as the world's largest Internet market by user number soon. Unsurprisingly, many tech companies in China (which has the most Internet users in the world)—including Tencent, Alibaba, Didi Kuaidi, and Xiaomi—are looking at India as a potential market and source of investment opportunities.

按照用户数量计算，印度有望在不久后取代美国，成为世界上最大的互联网市场。所以，中国众多科技公司都将印度看作是一个潜在市场和投资机遇的来源，也就不足为奇了，这其中就包括腾讯、阿里巴巴、滴滴快的和小米等公司。值得一提的是，中国的互联网用户数量是世界上最多的。

Several of Baidu's products are already available in India and have tens of millions of users. The most popular ones are utility apps for Android devices: ES File Explorer (which has over 10 million monthly active users in India), DU Speed Booster (eight million), and DU Battery Saver (eight million).

百度的多款产品已经登陆印度市场，用户也达到数千万。最受欢迎的产品是专门针对安卓设备的几款实用应用：ES文件浏览器（在印度的每月活跃用户数已经突破1000万），DU Speed Booster和DU Battery Saver（这两款应用在印度的每月活跃用户数均达到800万）。

It also operates a third-party Android app store called MoboMarket, which is already available in Hindi. Support for more Indian languages is planned—including Bengali, Tamil, Marathi, Telugu, and Urdu—in order to attract consumers in smaller cities, part of Baidu's plan to grow its user base by targeting people who are accessing the Internet or using smartphones for the first time.

另外，百度在印度推出了第三方安卓应用商店MoboMarket，而且还有一个印地语版本。百度还计划支持更多的印度语言，其中包括孟加拉语、泰米尔语、马拉地语和乌尔都语，以吸引小城市的消费者。按照百度的计划，它希望能吸引第一次使用互联网或智能手机的受众，从而实现用户数量的整体增长。