Question: When was the last time Rediff.com reported a profit? Answer: The quarter ending June 30th 2008*, making it 18 quarters (four years and three months) of losses. In the current quarter, Rediff.com has reported revenues of $3.97 million, 18% less as compared to $4.81 million in the corresponding quarter last fiscal year, and a 3% increase over $3.84 million reported last quarter. India Online revenues for the quarter were $3.2 million. The operating EBITDA loss was $2.0 million, higher than the loss of $1.73 million in the comparable quarter last year and the net loss stood at $3.0 million, although that included a goodwill impairment charge of $2.0 million arising from India Abroad, the second writedown Rediff has taken on the paper, although that too was offset by a gain of $1.4 million from the sale of an undisclosed investment. Here's a chart which depicts how Rediff has done in the last 19 quarters: While the exchange rates has changed significantly since 2008, Rediff had reported revenues of $8.32 million in its last profitable quarter, of which India Online revenues were $6.56 million, which included $5 million advertising revenues. Now its overall revenues are a fraction of that. This begs the question: can horizontal portals in India be profitable? We know that Rediff has increased branding spends over the last couple of years, but as you can tell, revenues has been on a continuous decline, so it clearly isn't helping. Rediff Founder Ajit Balakrishnan keeps pointing towards the…
