LinkedIn opens AP headquarters in Singapore

The businessman’s ‘facebook’ boasts 540,000 members in Singapore from a working population of more than 1million.

Its Singapore office will serve as the company's headquarters for the Asia-Pacific region, including Japan, and help drive
further expansion and revenue growth.

According to Arvind Rajan, LinkedIn's managing director and vice president for Asia-Pacific and Japan, the local office, which will be located in the central business district, and will focus on both the local and regional markets.

Rajan, who will relocate from LinkedIn's U.S. headquarters in Mountain View, California, said he is currently interviewing candidates for regional leadership roles before building the rest of the team including finance, human resources andmarketing directors.

Singapore will mark the third office to be established in the Asia-Pacific region, after India and Australia, and another in Japan will be ready later this year, he added. LinkedIn also has offices in London, Ireland, the Netherlands, France and Canada.

Rajan said Singapore was chosen as a local office and a regional hub to drive expansion in Asia because it is located closer to many of the company's major markets in the region. He added that many of LinkedIn's global customers including multinational corporations have regional headquarters here.

The country is also a talent hub for Asia and its economy is built around talent, which is a "natural synergy" with what LinkedIn does--that is, to connect talent with opportunities, he said.

There is also a "real revenue opportunity" in Singapore where LinkedIn has over 540,000 members, about half the professional workforce of 1.2 million here. "So as a market by itself, it's also valuable," he said.