We covered on Justdial’s Local Business / Yellow Pages Search using Voice vs Web / Mobile. Today we’ll touch base upon its Competition, Advertising on Local Search Engines, Ratings Systems and its impnding Voice Search launch in the United States.
Justdial vs Competition JustDial faces intense competition in the internet business. Websites such as Zomato have been able to create online communities that prompt users to visit regularly and maintain mindshare. Zomato also attracts direct visits rather than through search engines. Justdial enjoys an almost monopolistic position in the voice search business. Competitors, such as ZatSe and askme, whilst available over voice, do not enjoy the same brand recall as JustDial.
Justdial’s Rating and Review – UnImpressive
A significant proportion of JustDial’s ratings and reviews on its portal appears to us of poor quality in terms of utility that can support a loyal following. This makes it unlikely for its website to be able to build a similar community presence, as seen in popular Indian review sites such as Zomato and burrp, to attract repeat visitors.
Justdial Vs Google in Local Business Search in India
Google, for its online local business search mechanism, uses Infomedia Yellow Pages’ database. Google’s foray into the local business search may provide strong competition to JustDial. Since a significant amount of traffic into JustDial comes in from search engines, Google’s foray, which displays results on the search result page itself, may reduce page hits for JustDial.
Voice Local Search to Continue
India currently has ~900mn telephone users (wireless and wireline). However, broadband penetration in the country is ~6%, with 3G penetration for top telcos at ~2.8-3.1% of their total subscriber base. Hence, it is likely that voice may dominate for the foreseeable future.
Advertising Revenues of Justdial
JustDial derives ~37% of its paid listings from Mumbai and Delhi and 48% from nine other large cities and hence derives most of its revenues from 11 cities only. Given that users in larger cities may shift their search requirements to the internet where the company does not enjoy a similar leadership, there may be a need to invest and expand in smaller cities. Here is a Detailed Review on how Justdial promotes Voice & Web advertising Combo packages. JustDial’s revenue per campaign has declined from Rs18,158 in FY09 to Rs15,169 in FY12. Google offers AdWords Advertising Platform as well as Google Product Listing [Not very popular in India yet].
How does Justdial Collect SME Data ?
JustDial relies on re-sellers who help the company collect unique data. It relies on re-sellers (akin to agents of the company) to collect data and generate leads. They are incentivised for doing the same. The company also hires in-house marketing agents who strive to convert free listings into paid ones. Whenever you call, your are also profiled in quest of discovering and listing more SMEs on the Local search Platform.
JustDial employed 2900 sales persons (~2200 tele sales people and ~700 feet on the field), with each sales person handling ~58 campaigns. JustDial’s per employee salary cost was around Rs210,00 in FY12, with cost of call center employees ranging between Rs150,000 and Rs200,000. This is significantly below the average salary paid by BPO firms in the market.
JustDial founders have an ambitious target to launch US dial-in / internet business partnered with one of its existing PE investors, independent of the Indian entity. I think this could distract the growth in Indian business as it is still establishing dominance on alternate search formats – Internet and Mobile where it faces lot of competition as discussed above.