Q2-09 Call: Info Edge Plans Senior Mgt Job Portal; IT Contribution To Jobs Down To 25.4%

BSE listed Info Edge India (Naukri.com) is considering a senior management portal, the company disclosed during an analysts call on Friday. Details of the portal are not know - it’s just at a concept stage and they’ve not yet started work on it. Earlier this month, Info Edge had also announced another job portal targeting freshers, called FirstNaukri.

FirstNaukri will be sold to the same customer base through the same sales team for Naukri. Revenue will recruiters and campuses for branding and marketing their students to the corporates; students will not be charged. In the near term, there may be an softening in fresher recruitment, but Naukri is looking at it as a long term play.

On Competition And Market Scenario
According to Info Edge, the situation is dire for competitors - who are being hit harder. “We believe that one of our competitors may actually grow negatively, and marketshare will go up as a natural consequence. Client budgets are slashed in the following pecking order: Placement Consultants –> Print –> TimesJobs –> Monster –> Naukri

However, at 24 percent growth, Info Edge revenues grew less than previously indicated. The company feels that growth may decline even further in Q3 and Q4, though they refused to give a guidance, citing a volatile market scenario.

Pressure on Rates?
Client are asking not asking for lower prices, but they may downgrade to save on costs. The branding solutions will be hit first - downgrading from a panel to a homepage link, or take it for 3 months instead of a year. The company doesn’t see logins moving south, unless the number of recruiters in a company goes down. “The database is a bread and butter product for our clients. They’re probably going to drop competition logins first.” Info Edge is also planning to give bulk discounts, but not lower prices.

Decline In IT Hiring & The Small Accounts Team
The key concern has been the decline in IT hiring: from 29.7% in Q2 last year, to 27.16% last quarter, and 25.16% in Q2 this year. “IT is slowing down fastest, and it is an area of concern, and we expect the slowdown will last through this financial year.”

The company believes they’ll have to launch new products and look at sectors outside IT. Last quarter, the contribution from Infrastructure clients grew at 24%, though banking remained stagnant at 5% of revenues. What’s interesting is that the second rung accounts are growing faster in terms of revenue, and though larger clients have reduced spends, the company claims to have made it up by adding new customers, and more revenue from the smaller accounts team. There’s lots of churn at the bottom of the pyramid in terms of clients. To cut costs, Info Edge itself intends to go slow on hiring - at present, the sales team headcount is around the same compared to Q1. They spent around Rs. 13.7 crores across all businesses on advertising, and are also not cutting marketing expenditure.

Statistics related to specific verticals:
Naukri.com & Quadrangle

– Share of recruitment solutions - 86%
– Growth is slow, but margins have expanded.
– Naukri Revenue from recruiters grew at about 15%, while candidate services grew at 43%
– Main recruitment business grew by 19 percent, of this 15 percent growth was in databases and corporate business.
– 9% revenue is from candidate resume services
– Quadrangle grew at about 38%
– Share of IT: 25.4%, from 27.16 last quarter, 29.7% in the same quarter last year.
– Share of Banking: stagnant at 5% of revenues, same as last year
– Job posts on Naukri: 87,000 (steady above 80,000)
– Number of recruiters: 18600, up from 15400
– Top 10 percent of clients - upwards of 62 percent
– EBITDA margins in recruitment were up to 43% percfrom 41% a year ago
– Total resume database is at 15 million, adding 16500 resumes per day
– Resume updates: 37,000 per day
– Client base: 18600, up from 15400 last year.

Other verticals and Investments:

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Shaadi & Bharatmatrimony Launch Phone Services

Matrimonial site Shaadi.com has announced the launch of Shaadi.com Sapphire, a phone based service with call center executives who guide callers with the matrimonial search process - whether creating a profile, searching for profiles, connecting or contacting. Members can choose daily updates over phone, or email for relevant matches. The service, available between 10am-7pm is priced at Rs. 14,950 for six months.

What’s interesting is the cross-media approach that Shaadi.com has been taking - apart from online, they’ve got services on DTH, Mobile, Offline (Shaadi Points), Phone (Sapphire). Some of these act significantly to costs - like offline services at Shaadi Points, and phone services like Sapphire, which others are tie-ups that (we assume) are revenue share deals - DTH and Mobile. Let’s see what’s next on the agenda.

Update: Arch rival BharatMatrimony has also launched their own phone based services - called BM Privilege. They positioning appears to be a little different from that of Shaadi - Murugavel Janakiraman, CEO & Founder of the Consim Group is quoted in the release emphasising on the fact that “People want privacy and they also want personalised service.” I guess that means the service will offer some amount of anonymity. Interesting. The pricing is on par, but the payment cycle is shorter than from Shaadi: BM Privilege package offers the service at Rs 8650 for 3 months, but that it is available only till the end of the month.

The matrimonial players can look at the following media for their services:

Job sites have been hosting job fairs across the country; I wonder when we’ll see Shaadi hold a Swayamwar. :P

Shaadi.com & Vodafone Ink Revenue Share Deal For Matrimonial On WAP, Voice Portal & SMS

Shaadi.com, the matrimonial portal from People Group has gone mobile with Vodafone, launching the “Shaadi.com on Vodafone” service. The services launched include a presence on the operator on-deck WAP portal Vodafone Live, a voice portal service and SMS service. Shaadi.com on Vodafone is priced as follows:

Rather expensive, don’t you think, at Rs. 6/min for voice, and Rs. 10/profile for profile views? The service has been powered, not unexpectedly, by People Group’s mobile company Mauj. A People Interactive spokesperson told MediaNama that this is essentially a revenue share deal, but declined to comment on the specifics. Nothing on Vodafone Live’s numbers or specifics of revenue shares, so we can’t really gauge the usage potential of this service.

Interestingly, while this is an exclusive tie-up with Vodafone for now, People Interactive said they’re going to do deals with other operators in the future. Also in the works is an independent launch WAP site…it’s likely that operator tie-ups will remain even on an independent WAP site, since the operator will provide the billing.

As of today, we’ve not similar announcements from the other two significant matrimonial players - Bharatmatrimony (Consim Info) and Jeevansathi (Info Edge)

Disclosure: I own an inconsequential number of shares of Info Edge

Related:
– Manorama Group Launches Matrimonial Site; Other Classifieds To Move To Verticals?
– Matrimonial Sites Ink DTH Deals - Shaadi-DishTV, Bharatmatrimony-Tata Sky

Manorama Group Launches Matrimonial Site; Other Classifieds To Move To Verticals?

One of Bharatmatrimonys 15000 15 matrimonial sites has serious competition: the Malayala Manorama group, the most pervasive media group in Kerala has launched M4Marry.com, a matrimonial site targeting Malayalees both from India and abroad, reports Afaqs. The site currently has around 55,000 subscribers, and the company is targeting 1.5 lakh in the next six months - that’s an addition of 15833 subscribers per month. We’ll do a status check then.

Manorama Online also plans to launch other classified portals; real estate is next. Manorama’s media reach cannot be underestimated, and it would be interesting to track the impact of M4Marry on other matrimonial portals, particularly Keralamatrimony, since Bharatmatrimony is dominant in South India (according to a competitor), segmented according to regions and religion.

Going through Manorama Online, I noticed that they already have a classifieds section: with Matrimonial, Real Estate, Jobs, Auto, Personals and Business classifieds. So I wouldn’t be surprised if instead of keeping these segments within the horizonal (Manorama Online), they’re planning to move towards verticals, with separate websites. Manorama’s appears rather dated, and I wonder if the growth of the classifieds business was being constrained by legacy infrastructure. Even then, a surficial makeover like the one MoneyControl got might make it appear more contemporary.

So far, the trend has been of separating the classifieds business from the portal/news site - Times Business Solutions was hived off from Indiatimes by BCCL and Firefly will house the classifieds verticals from HT Media, while Hindustantimes.com and Livemint.com will remain with HT Media. And Real Estate classifieds appear to be in vogue among online media companies - While MagicBricks (Times Business), 99Acres (Info Edge), Indiaproperty (Consim) have been around for a while, People Interactive launched Makaan.com earlier this year, and HT Media is also entering that space. Do look up the domain registration for MakaanNama.com

Related:
– Q1-09 Call: HT Media - Rs. 100 Crores Internet Biz In 1.5 Years; Matrimonial Portal In Q3, Real Estate In Q1 2010
– Info Edge Q1 2008-09 Earnings Call - Investment Strategy; On Competition From Makaan, Shine, LinkedIn; All The Numbers

Disclosure: I own an inconsequential number of shares of Info Edge

Matrimonial Sites Ink DTH Deals - Shaadi-DishTV, Bharatmatrimony-Tata Sky

Looks like JeevanSathi.com won’t be able to find a DTH partner, for a while. Its peers - Shaadi (People Interactive) and Bharatmatrimony (Consim Info) have found DTH partners in Dish TV and Tata Sky. Bharatmatrimony has been live (details here) on Tata Sky as Actve Matrimony for a while now, and Shaadi announced their plans yesterday (via release). There isn’t another DTH player in the market - BIG TV (from Reliance ADAG) is still in the works, and Bharti Telemedia (Airtel) has had FDI issues.

Update: Was just informed that there is another DTH player - DD Direct. Wonder what the service will be called if JS ties up with them — Direct Saathi?

How does this work?
In case of Shaadi Active, users can search for a bride or groom, according to age, community, caste, profession etc, and the subscriber can choose to contact him/her. A problem - it appears that there will be a limited search database, refreshed on a daily basis, and not the entire database.

Actve Matrimony also has limited access - to around 1000 profiles every week, and listings are on an op-in basis from premium subscribers. DTH users can also seek contact details via SMS to Tata Sky, and Tata Sky subscribers are offered the service free of cost. Interestingly, information is being displayed without name and photo. some details here.

What this is all about

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