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There are 3 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India" Why InfoEdge (Naukri) Invested In PolicyBazaar.com? What’s the fund size they have to Invest in Startups? - InfoEdge CFO Ambarish Raghuvanshi Answers
Here is an exclusive interview with the Infoedge CFO on what made them cut this deal and what to they plan to invest in the next 2-3 years Q) What made Infoedge invest in Etechaces? Could you disclose their current revenue numbers? A) The drivers for the investment are attractivenes of the space-financial product distribution, quality of the founding team and the relatively early stage of the market. It is far too early to talk about numbers but the success of businesses like moneysupermarket.com and confused.com in the UK points in the direction of size being attractive
Q) In what tranches is the funds being invested? What are the milestones that are set? Maybe some projections that can be shared? A) The investment will be made over the next 12-18 months in tranches in line with operating and revenue milestones. They are also staged with expenditure and investment plans. In early stage businesses it is not possible to be too precise with tranches
Q) What would the funds invested be used for? A) To build the business in terms of sales system, team, brand, marketing, channels, etc
Q) How will this integrate with other properties of Infoedge? if at all? A) Not anticipated at this stage. It is in the internet space and is monetised from Day 1
Q) PolicyBazaar also plans to offer loans - Would this be student loans? If yes would they be marketed via Shiksha.com? A) As of now it will focus on insurance. In Phase 2 they would look at other areas such as loans. At that time it could be fused with shiksha for educational loans and with 99acres for realestate loans, for example
Q) Could you share the cost per lead and the profitability of a model like policybazaar? What will be the other kind of monetization model that will be explored? A) It will largely be lead based revenue, from insurance companies. Far too early to talk about other issues. Similar models in other countries are profitable
Q) What are the spaces in which Infoedge plans to invest in going ahead? A) Around the internet, monetisable, India-focused and with a clear business focus. Apart from these broad parameters, it is fairly open
Q) What’s the size of the inhouse fund available for investing? A) We will invest Rs 100-150 crores over the next 2-3 years but this is not cast in stone. It will re-assessed and tweaked as we go along. WATBlog Analysis - It does seem that infoedge is clearly focussed on revenue driven internet startups and is very cautious in picking its investments until and unless there is a clear synergy or apparent revenue model which gels with its current set of portals. Its their monetization ability be it the subscription model that naukri itself followed or the pay per leads model that policybazaar seems to be following that has made them India’s first BSE listed dotcom company. It is very unlikely that naukri might invest in a social networking startup given the dismal global stats with regards to monetisation or even in an emerging technology that has no apparent revenue model just like google did in its early days. Though given this approach the investment in brijj (which is a home grown site aping linkedin.com from the infoedge stable) seems a little off mark given that monetization there seems unlikely in the near term atleast. Maybe Sanjeev (Naukri CEO) or Hitesh (Naukri COO) can clarify on that..
Related Posts Also check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult Can We Engage Social Media to Pursue Social Entrepreneurship?Before I begin exploring the idea of social media as a tool to pursue social entrepreneurship, I think one warrants an explanation the concept first. Social Entrepreneurship can be understood as the concept of providing innovative an enterprising solutions to the society’s most pressing problems. It moves away from the concept of social work because social entrepreneurs like any other breed of entrepreneurs work towards creating a business value with their efforts. The Grameen Bank story of Bangladesh is an excellent example to understand social entrepreneurship.
In basic, you are looking at getting entrepreneurship that will help the unprivileged mass or rather work with the weaker sections of the society, uplift them and do all this while still seeking profits. It runs similar to philantropy only in terms of an end goal or impact, and is far away from NGO/NPO efforts in terms of thought practice. In that way social entrepreneurship is higher concept considering it facilitates empowering people to create value than just generate facilities they can use. The difference is being enterprising. Now how do social media come in to the picture of social entrepreneurship?Social media in its truest essence works on wisdom of the crowd. You can involve and reach out to people beyond physical limitations. This will help build the knowledge pool of the social enterprise. So you can have your team split and half who sit in a different city, while the other can work at the grass root both catering to different departmental function. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. Online mentoring, online volunteering, business alliances, the possibilities are endless. You can reach out to newer markets for products and services developed from the initiative. Social media is essentially free and hence cost effective. Social media also powers interaction and hence knowledge sharing. It creates a new set of opportunities because now you are in the open and not restricted to geographical restrictions. Tools For Social Entrepreneurs to UseOne can use video sharing very effectively in social entrepreneurship. Often due to the limited resource available, social enterprises can’t invest much into marketing. A video on Youtube about what the enterprise does, or what innovative product they have launched can spread awareness big time. It can attract investors, it can attract customers, it can help recruitment when people see a face and a demonstration of what you are upto. Heck it can even create awareness about social entrepreneurship itself. I for one came to know about it over a year back after watching social entrepreneur Mirai Chatterjee’s interview.
One can also use the powerful medium of blogs to engage people. Use it as a platform to showcase your products and services. Say you running a for profit educational venture in rural Orissa. Have stories of individual efforts and sacrifices each of them make to study while at the same time show how the business is creating value. Suppose you run a business which uses the local artisans to create magical artifacts, showcase them through a photoblog, make purchase available easy through the blog while also writing about how to use them effectively to gift or decorate. A lot of people blog about social entrepreneurship, engage with them because you share a common passion. Have a social entrepreneurship B-Plan contest if you want! Facebook has 100 million users, Myspace has three times that. Those are huge numbers. Use social networks effectively to reach out to volunteers or recruits, and others interested in the social venture you establish. Seek out communities and groups that are related to your core business function and engage them. Use the platform to advertise and sell your product. Converse with them on the networking sites to get feedback and open new possibilities. Use bookmarking, use others’ blogs, use vblogs and podcasts to promote and advertise your products where you can also get feedback instead of a faceless audience in television and newspaper. I have written about how blogging and SNS can be used to propel social entrepreneurship on one of my blogs before. The possibilities are endless and limited only by imagination. Social entrepreneurship is fast growing popular and the opportunity in it is far beyond the buzz. Personally, I am of the opinion that growth in India will eventually move out of the big cities and happen in the rural confines of our country. I believe that the value waiting to be unlocked in our hinterlands is enormous. Of course social entrepreneurship doesn’t just mean you have to work in villages. It is about empowering the underprivileged wherever they might be. I hope the two buzzwords of our time social media and social entrepreneurship work together and grow to completely alter the value chain and entrepreneurial eco system for the better.
Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult Will Google Phone Charm India?Google phone will debut in India in December this year, reports Business Standard. The price will be higher than what the user has to pay in the United States ($179 or Rs.8200). The handset will be an HTC device, and will be launched through a possible tie-up with some operator. As we discussed, the Google phone does has a lot of potential. If taken as a finished product, it falls flat. See it more as a platform for the developers to experiment on. At least for the first year. India has a lot of developers. Many interesting applications can emerge from here. I am particularly interested in seeing some VoIP application for the Google phone. The reason being that T-Mobile had said they had gone extra mile t block VoIP on the Google phone. There are chances that the phone might debuts in India, locked in with Airtel. This is because Airtel already has a partnership with HTC. However, knowing India, an unlocked model will have to be launched in India, too. Anyways, if they don’t do this, we (Indians) will. By the time it arrives in India, a lot of applications would have already been running on the phone. Indian developers will once again learn from US mistakes. Though, in this case the benefits will be quiet global. Can Indian developers come up with better apps for the G-phone, than the US ones? Well, why not, we did make one of the most successful Facebook applications. Didn’t we?
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We caught up with Infoedge CFO Mr. Ambarish Raghuvanshi and questioned him about the 
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