Rediff.com's annual revenues haven't gone beyond the $30 million mark since the highs of 2007-08, and on its Q1-FY12 conference call, Chairman and CEO Ajit Balakrishnan once again pointed towards the opportunity in usage growth following the launch of 3G by telecom operators, and the promise of India's National Broadband plan, adding that he believes India is 18-24 months away from "true broadband adoption". Citing Comscore, company executives pointed out that Rediff's active user base was 14.9 million users in India as of June 2011, a year on year growth of 41%, compared with a market growth of 14%. However, there were worries during the quarter: Balakrishnan said that the online share trading community, mutual funds and the insurance sector, which accounted for 25-30% of Rediff's revenue in the previous quarter, are going through a challenging phase, and have cut their online spends by 25%. Rediff's pageviews were up 40%, and though Balakrishnan said that the company has not faced pricing pressure, he conceded that Rediff had some unsold inventory "which is unusual". Our Q&A with Balakrishnan on the conference call: MediaNama: How has the rollout of Rediffmail NG been? Are you still only with MTNL? Balakrishnan: We don't break out users, and right now we're with MTNL, and in active discussions with all of them. We can work without operator tie-ups but it drives tremendous value when data costs are bundled in. I'm optimistic that one of these days we will be able to announce a deal with at…
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