Bangalore: Global Internet company Yahoo on July 14 announced the opening of a software development centre in Bangalore, its first such facility outside of the US.

The centre in Bangalore would focus on product innovation and leading edge technology development for Yahoo worldwide, Yahoo Software Development India Pvt Ltd's CEO Venkat Pachapakesan and COO Bharat Vijay told a news conference in Bangalore.

The Bangalore centre, to be launched in August, plans to have 150 highly skilled software engineers by the end of 2004, they said.

Panchapakesan and Vijay said the Bangalore centre would be engaged in the area of software technology for its parent Yahoo Inc, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.

It would focus on key engineering areas for Yahoo including development of its key products like finance, search, mail and messenger, data mining and research, e-commerce, security, core infrastructure and database technologies, they said.

To a question, Panchapakesan said for the Bangalore centre, Yahoo Inc has no plans to move jobs from the US, adding, recruitment for the India centre would be made locally, noting that India has a vast pool of talented engineers.

The India centre, which would primarily focus on software development and internet-based product innovation, is already in the process of recruiting around 100 software engineers, he said.

The new facility would work in tandem with the US R&D centre to keep up with the growing needs of the industry, they said, adding, it would help build products for Yahoo's business units across the globe.

It would work on development of highly scalable server technology, UNIX/C/C++, Server technologies, Middleware, TCP/IP networking, FreeBSD, Apache, Oracle/MySQL DB and Data Mining Algorithms, among others, Vijay said.

PTI