Wikipedia sets sights on conquering India

New York: With China virtually cut off and Western markets maturing, Wikipedia is targeting India first and possibly Brazil next to reach its goal of one billion users, executive director Sue Gardner said.

The San Francisco-based online encyclopedia, which turns ten years old today, also vows to reach that goal in the next five years while maintaining its status as a non-profit organisation.

Wikipedia claims 410 million unique visitors a month — fifth most in the world — making it the envy of many for-profit rivals in the Silicon Valley who aspire to generate such numbers.

"We're a little bit confounding to folks in Silicon Valley because they look at us and see the potential for monetisation, just because their entire world is geared toward monetisation," Gardner told Reuters in an interview.

"We don't move in the world of IPOs and valuation and investment," said Gardner, who runs the non-profit foundation behind Wikipedia.

"We never talk about it, we never think about it."

For now Wikipedia is content to function on its operating budget of about $20 million (Dh73.4 million) a year, raised mostly through donations, with the primary goal of adding more readers.

This year it will open its first overseas office, in India, where Wikipedia hopes to increase readership and articles in English and several Indian languages, she said. Among 316 events marking the tenth anniversary in 104 countries, 60 events were scheduled in India.

"Our main strategic focus right now is on India and other countries in the developing world. Massive numbers of people are starting to get connected to the internet, mostly through mobile phones but also through traditional PCs," she said.

"Brazil is provisionally next."

China will have to wait until Wikipedia has guarantees its content will not be censored.

Wikipedia has opted against moving servers into China because of the condition it would have to agree to government limits on publishing.