Updated below:
ApnaCircle, a professional networking site, now allows companies to create individual pages. According to the site, the new company pages would highlight features such as company news, products & services for individual companies and showcase business and career opportunities to ApnaCircle members.
Yogesh Bansal, founder and CEO at ApnaCircle informed MediaNama that currently in India about 100-150 companies have created company pages on ApnaCircle.com, while globally about 300,000 companies have created their company pages. The company currently has 3 million registered users on its portal.
ApnaCircle competes with global professional networking site LinkedIn. LinkedIn is currently operating in 25 cities around the world and offers its products in 18 global languages. It will be interesting to see how ApnaCircle competes against LinkedIn. However, according to Bansal, unlike LinkedIn, ApnaCircle is targeting Tier II and III cities where it would focus on listing more jobs that are not high profile. He was of the opinion that when a user wants to search for a job or creates his brand on a professional networking site, he won’t just register on LinkedIn but will sign-up on all professional networking/job sites to create his brand.
Features: The company page features an Overview tab, Career and jobs tab, discussion tab, and customisable blank tab.
Companies can share their history, profile, logo, movements and achievements and attach social media & RSS feeds, as well as discussion groups in the overview tab. The first thing that the overview tab displays is a ‘company live’ section which shows latest updates including new employees, change of positions and recent job offers etc. Users can also check company employees that are on ApnaCircle network. It also features stats, information, and most viewed employee profiles.
– The Career tab allows companies to attach sections like ‘Jobs’ & discussion ‘Groups’ which have been posted on ApnaCircle’s network. Besides job links, ApnaCircle also allows users to add pictures, videos and audio to give a preview of the company. Companies can also attach contact details for prospective job or information seekers. Apart from that, the company page also links to a discussion tab through which employees can join the conversation with members of ApnaCircle.
The Company page also links to an extra blank page for additional content via an external URL to company’s website. Companies can also change the name of this tab. The page also features integration with social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook where users can share the page with their network.
Mobile Apps: Currently, ApnaCircle has a mobile app on RIM’s BlackBerry OS and Yogesh Bansal informed MediaNama that Android and iOS apps would be launched by late 2012 or early 2013.
Monetization: Apnacircle offers premium including the ability of posting a job offer and allowing companies to browse through candidates. Currently, Apnacircle offers 20 free job postings, after which it charges a fee for job offers. Apart from that, the company also features a display ad on the user’s dashboard. Apnacircle claims that companies such as Dell, Michael Page International, among others have used its services.
ApnaCircle was launched by Yogesh Bansal in 2007 and is a cash flow positive company. In 2009, French business networking site ViaDeo had acquired ApnaCircle in an all stock deal. In 2009, the company also merged with Tainji.com, a chinese social networking site. Apart from that, ApnaCircle – Viadeo – Tianji acquired Unyk, a Canadian social networking site to grow the Indian market organically. In 2007, Sabeer Bhatia joined a board of directors. The company claims to be cash flow positive and has global headquarters in Paris and Indian in Noida, Filmcity.
* Updated:The previous version of the article had some factual inaccuracies. We apologise for the same and have updated the article.
