Just Dial the local search company is aggressively employing IT & Systems to stay ahead of competition. We’d like to present to you two of its systems – Local Search Monetization with Reverse Auction and the ERP for Search Plus Product.
JustDial has streamlined its earlier Get Quotes service to Real Time Reverse Auction (RTRA), which would improve user experience and also generate strong commission-based revenue. In RTRA, JDL deals only in branded products and whenever the company receives a query from a user it passes it on it to a vendor. JDL allows only the first seven vendors who responded with price quotes to participate in the auction. It charges a 0.2% commission from each of the seven vendors and, therefore, it generates a commission of 1.4% per lead, irrespective of whether the lead gets converted into sales or not. If the transaction is completed, then JDL receives an additional 1.0% from the vendor who completed the transaction.
Just Dial launched Search Plus service in 3QFY14 and currently, 10 Search Plus services are live and many more products are in the pipeline. As per JDL’s management, the user experience is very good. JDL focuses on engaging the small and medium enterprise or SME/vendor community for adopting its Search Plus platform and also the fulfillment process. Around 85,000 establishments have signed up for the Search Plus service including ~12,500 restaurants, ~20,000 grocery stores, ~20,000 medical stores, ~10,000 doctors etc. as of end-3QFY14. On a base of 10.8mn listings, ramp-up of establishments would happen at a faster pace from the current base of ~85,000 only.
Just Dial provides comprehensive ERP software solution to these establishments like grocery/provision stores etc which interacts with the JDL platform and, hence, the order execution is smooth. In addition, this solution can help such grocery stores and other establishments in inventory management also, as it can calculate real-time inventory in the system and place a direct order to suppliers like Hindustan Unilever (HUL), P&G etc once the inventory depletes to the threshold level [FMCG Companies would be keenly interested in this Big Data which they are going to get access in Real Time, for the First Time on Geographical Basis which until now was only available at the month end based on Distributor reports]. In this case, JDL has the potential to earn revenue by way of monthly rentals for the software solution and a transaction-based commission.
Currently, JDL is able to monetise only 2.3% of these listings. With a bouquet of services in the form of Get Quotes, Search Plus and other such services, the monetisation rate can increase to more than 5% in the next three-five years. We believe the full potential of Get Quotes and Search Plus services would be visible in the next four years, definitely innovative business practices and solutions are at work here.