WatBlog Newsletter Archive: WATBlog Update There are 2 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

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Matrimony Goes Offline: BharatMatrimony Takes Magazine Route While JeevanSathi Goes Retail
Accel India’s New Fund Of $60 Million For Seed and Early Stage Fund
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There are 2 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

Matrimony Goes Offline: BharatMatrimony Takes Magazine Route While JeevanSathi Goes Retail

The first generation of web services like classifieds are constantly looking at multiple touch points to reach the consumer which go way beyond their main source of revenue i.e. the web. So if the matrimony players foray into both mobile and DTH wasn’t enough now matrimony players are looking to go offline be it offline centres or even matrimony magazines.

So two matrimony players in Bharatmatrimony and Jeevansaathi have taken steps to go offline.

BharatMatrimony is launching a matrimony magazine targetting NRI’s in US and Canada. The magazine will be a free-of-cost called BharatMatrimony Times and will be published once in two months, to begin with. The online version of the magazine will soon be available on www.bharatmatrimonytimes.com Well the NRI marriages with Indian girls has been a trend for quite sometime now and its important for matrimony players like Bharatmatrimony to invest in attracting this segment and therefore the magazine route as other offline options of TV ads (which they have used in India) might be very expensive to do.

jeevansaathi match point Jeevansaathi on the other end is the late bloomer as far as opening offline centres is concerned. It announced its foray into offline centres in april and also announced its plan to open 25-30 centres in 6 months. The launch of the centre in Mumbai is part of this roll out plan. Both Shaadi.com and Bharatmatrimony.com have ventured into the offline touchpoint model a couple of years ago. For Jeevansaathi the challenge is to compete with two equally strong players and brands in Shaadi.com and Bharatmatrimony.com.

As they say in any business the number 1 and 2 players makes money the 3rd breaks even and the others just trail behind. For Jeevansaathi its a game of beating one of these two players.

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Accel India’s New Fund Of $60 Million For Seed and Early Stage Fund

Accel which was earlier Erasmic Ventures in India has closed a $60M Venture Fund to invest in seed and early stage opportunities in India.

accel india

The fund is looking at sectors as divers as Technology, Technology-enabled Services, Internet, Mobile, Media, Life Sciences, Consumer Products and Services, and other high-growth sectors of the Indian economy

Seed and early stage markets continue to be under served in India, attracting less than 5% of the total Venture capital funds and given the dearth of funds at this critical stage of funding Accel’s new fund in these times of slowdown comes as a boon for startup founders. The other funds dealing in startup and seed stage funding are seedfund, Indian Angel Network and Mumbai angels.

Accel also participates in second round of funding for startups it seeds invests in and the latest example of that was Myntra which raised 5 million recently. At TIE ISB Connect Gagan Kumar one of the Managing Partners in Accel Ventures stated that they even do sub 100,000 $ deals but prefer to continue investing more money as the startup grows.