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Sulekha Falls Prey To Declining Ad Revenues - To Make Classified Paid

Sulekha an infamous commerce search engine and classified site would soon become paid service, till now they are offering free classified for c2c segment and charging for only jobs and real estate segments in b2c segment.

The move would be fully implemented in 6 months to 1 year and may evoke repulsive action by the users.

They have already started experimenting with setting a limit on free usage, paying for premium ads, and voluntary payment in appreciation of service.according to them in the past month alone 50 people have paid an average of Rs 200 under the last category.

Why such move?

Companies like sulekha are finding it tough to bargain for higher ad rates with their advertisers due to the increased competition in the classified space and being just a classified site also plays with the quality of users visiting the site.

The company has already seen a 25% drop in its corporate ad revenues, owing to the slowdown, and expects it to go down by about 50% before the end of this fiscal.

Another point is they might be burning cash in providing features like call back and mobile sms for sending the listing details which is making it tough to fund the operations.

Reason for change?

The company is hoping to earn Rs 1 crore as user fee in the first year and take it up to Rs 40-50 crore in about 4 years.

Presently, Sulekha 1 crore visitors form India, among the three crore people who search the net for local commerce. It has a high rate of conversion from visits to transactions of about 70%.

According to an survey by sulekha 75% of it users have access to some mode of electronic payment, and so doesn’t expect any practical difficulties in establishing a payment mechanism.

Sulekha can really become a premium classified site and target an audience looking for additional features which could also increase their bargaining power with the advertisers.

This could be a boon in disguise for classified sites like olx, prachaar and many other portals because if sulekha doesn’t consider its decision of going paid then they would be seen losing a lot of traffic to others.

The move by sulekha does not look permanent because it is done in the wake of declining ad revenues so reverting it back is still an option as they have put a 1 year deadline. Instead of making C2C segment paid they could have opted for complete b2b segment with paid option because in a country like India B2B segment has a higher prospect of attracting paid users.

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Mobile Number Portability Expected In August - Will It Have An Impact?

Until recently, like a week ago I could never watch a youtube video on my IDEA EDGE connection, it was a really frustrating experience to not even be able to access your mail with bearable through puts, I wished I could just switch my operator and the only thing that kept me from doing that is I didn’t wanted to change my number, I didn’t even get my personal cards printed because I was not sure if I am going to stick with this number or not. This is the story of almost every another mobile user in India.

mobile number portability

Now here comes a great news, Union Communications and IT Minister A Raja today said the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) was planning to start mobile number portability (MNP) in major cities of the country by August, and in the remaining cities by the end of this year. Bids had already been invited for providing the MNP switches. We have been hearing about MNP for quite some time now and have wrote earlier about it and is for sure going to be boon for the VAS players and is gonna be tougher for Mobile carriers to retain the customers with mediocre services and recently reported bad boy maneuvers.

With the advent of 3G and MNP, quality of service and data throughput are going to be the important factors determining user retainablity for the mobile carriers, especially in metros while it is going to be very low margin play in rural markets with cut-throat competition where call price and service availability are the only determining factors. While with only 30% penetration India’s mobile market is very attractive the lowest call rates make it very competitive. Though MNP is only going to make it more competitive for the existing mobile carriers it is definitely making it easier for the new players with huge cash reserves like Telenor to get a considerable share in the market, Reliance communications has been yearning to foray into the GSM markets and MNP implementation by august is a very good news for the company.

Rajiv adds: While the picture might look rosy lets not forget that TRAI has failed in successfully auctioning 3G three times over and given the impact that mobile number portability can create expect some tug of war between trai and the big bad operators. Also no one yet (including TRAI I believe) knows how MNP shall be implemented i.e. would there be a cost to the user for shifting from one operator to another? If yes how much would that be? Also as far as the early signs of the procedure to shift is concerned it a documentation oriented procedure which may take weeks so that again would dilute the impact of MNP. Also how often can one change the operator? Does the payment get carry forwarded or one needs to first clear dues with the existing operator?

All these are questions whose answers would have a serious impact on the value of MNP. Also bear in mind that MNP would impact post paid subscribers only.

If you ask me ideally I would like to change my operator by sending a simple sms and validating the same over IVR with a credit card number or any other verification. But Im not sure things would be as easy as that.

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Telecom Numbers Show Record Growth Of 15.4 Million While Broadband Still Lags Behind - TRAI Figures.

According to the latest figures by TRAI, Indian telecom service providers added 15.41 million wireless users in January-09.

The total telecom subscriber base also exploded past 400 million mark in January end and giving a boost to India's teledensity which now stands at 34.5%.

What’s really surprising is that this growth is even higher than the subscribers added in december 2008 which were 10.81 million whereas the economic scenario is more gloomier than last december.

Figures at a glance:

The total number of wireless users in the world’s fastest-growing telecom market was 362.30 million at the end of January.

The country’s fixed line user base, however, fell to 37.75 million in January from 37.90 million in December, TRAI said.

The country’s overall tele-density, or the number of phone users for every 100 individuals, was 34.50% at the end of January compared with 33.23% at the end of December.

Total broadband subscribers reached 5.65 mn in jan 2009 against 5.45 mn in dec 2008.

SUBSCRIBERS FIGURES FOR TOP 4 TELCOS:

Company	Total users till Jan-09	Added users in Jan
BHARTI AIRTEL	88.38mn	2.73mn
VODAFONE	63.34mn	2.4mn
R.COM	61.34mn	4.95mn
BSNL	47.58mn	1.3mn

Explosive growth in telcos is no big surprise but what really seems to go out of picture is the dismal broadband numbers which no one seems to be talking about at the moment.

A miniscule broadband base of 5.65 mn is pathetic and no one seems to question TRAI about its ignorance to fasten things on the broadband end.

TRAI really needs to understand that good broadband scenario in India is much more important than 3G because high entry point barriers would definitely make 3G unaffordable in India for initial years to launch.

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