Online solutions for offline services

G. Ram Mohan

Jun 14, 2010

Wish to book your ticket to travel to your holiday destination, but, squeezed for time, find doing them difficult? Or wish to go to a movie in your neighbourhood theatre, but find it difficult to commute from your work place and then rush to the theatre to book tickets to view your favourite star's new movie?

Established players in the online movie ticketing business cater only to those who can splurge and shell out the extra moolah multiplexes charge to watch movies. With the biggest player in the segment bookmyshow.com catering to just one per cent of the movie-going crowd, the city-based www.nomorequeue.com sees a big opportunity online movie and bus ticketing sales offers to the company.

“When 35 per cent of the railway tickets could be sold online through IRCTC, we don’t see a reason why movie tickets can’t be sold using this platform. While the existing players in the industry cater only to the multiplex crowd, we wish to facilitate and make film viewing a pleasurable experience even in the other theatres across the country,” said R.Rama Raju, Chief Executive Officer, www.gapminers.com.

The philosophy of gapminers.com would be to use any business opportunity that the company sees in providing service to an online customer and help make their life easier, Mr Raju said, speaking with andhrabusiness.com in an exclusive interview.

When was www.nomorequeue.com started? What was the investment that went into starting the gapminers.com and how much has been invested so far in each vertical? Have you achieved breakeven?

The company nomorequeue.com was started in 2008, but operations were launched in 2009. The gapminers.com was started with one million dollar investment raised from family and friends. The company’s www.nomorequeue.com and www.upto75.com are its products. Of the one million dollars raised, 40 per cent of the investment went into developing upto75.com, 40 per cent into nomorequeue.com for movies. The remaining 20 per cent was invested in creating the ticketing site for buses within nomorqueue.com.

We wish to capture five per cent of the market signing up both single screen theatres and multiplexes.

How many cities do these sites reach out to provide their services? How do you operate for multi-city deals? Do you have sales offices across and if so, in how many cities and how many people?

Our ticketing site operates in seven cities like Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Pune and Bangalore. We currently have 18 employees. Apart from the marketing part, all our works are outsourced. We have currently enlisted 75 theatres across the seven cities which include two standalone multiplexes - Innovative Multiplex and Vision Cinemas - in Bangalore.

In Hyderabad, we have signed up 10 theatres and will add another five in a month. We need to pay the theatres an advance to start this service and are balancing both the volume of tickets we sell and are adding theatres accordingly. We send messages on only new releases to our registered users. Sending 1,00,000 messages to mobiles costs Rs 5,000.

Through our association with funcinemas.com, which has presence in 40 cities, these services can be availed in those places by our users. We wish there are more players in this segment like in the telecom sector. New players into that sector now need not educate the public on anything except bother about giving a better offer to draw users.

Our bus service tickets can be booked for destinations in Andhra Pradesh, Bangalore, Mumbai and Kolkata.

It appears UPto75.com is a good business model. What is the revenue model for your websites?

We charge the merchants for listing with upto75.com and have monthly, half-yearly and yearly packages. It is a good channel for retailers who have to spend a lot of money for communicating their discount offers through paper advertisement, hoarding and radio. These cost a lot to the retailers. Using a channel like ours, they can grow bigger and popular, we being cost-effective for those who don’t have deep pockets.

Fitness centres, hair saloons and restaurants advertise with us. All we need is the offer details and the logo of the business. We take care of the other things. The name upto75.com symbolises the extent to which one can avail himself or herself discounts through us. The site currently offers services in seven cities.

While for nomorequeue.com, the revenue comes from the Rs 10 we charge for a Rs 50 ticket and Rs 15 for a Rs 150 ticket in a multiplex. These charges include credit card processing charges and the 10 per cent service tax. When someone books a ticket for a bus service, the bus company pays commission to us.

We are adding an event platform to sell tickets on nomorequeue.com and had held the Bimal Roy festival and had sold tickets for it on the site.

Three years down the line, we will be doing transactions for Rs 300 crore through the sites. This is our conservative estimate. Of the 4-billion movie tickets sold every year, the biggest does not sell more than 10 million.

Do the two portals work independently or do you think somewhere, their interests can meet for working together??

All our portals work independently. Synergy between them is when someone buys a ticket on our site, we send them good offers automatically based on their city. Both the sites have a user base of 20,000 registered members.

What else are you proposing to sell through the nomorequeue.com apart from tickets for bus and cinema?

We don’t wish to enter into any other services right now. Our current endeavour is to make these popular and make them successful.

What is the partnership you have with ibibo.com? Is it just mutual exchange of links on each others sites because you are in the same space?

We are promoting ibibo.com. People can download coupon from our site on any service. We have an annual arrangement with them based on how many users we give them.

How are you marketing the sites and popularising them? Do you also propose to enter into other areas of entertainment like selling tickets for cultural shows across cities? And renting movies on line or DVDs?

For marketing our sites, we are into online marketing, advertisement at theatres, movie slides, release paper advertisements to coincide with movie releases. Lot of publicity also happens through word of mouth and can boast of 20,000 registered users for films. One need not register with us to avail our services. The business can’t be created overnight. They take time to materialize because of the trust deficit initially. For some one to adopt a service, they have to try it out once at least.

To popularise upto75.com , we rely on vouchers targeting our customers by entering into partnerships with various employers to draw the maximum mileage. We also bank on city-based portals like chennaionline.com in Chennai which is akin to fullhyderabad.com of Hyderabad.

We don’t wish to get into renting film DVDs and wish to remain an online solution provider for basically offline services and help make life easier for our users.

Are you planning to have partnership with the likes of idlebrain.com to draw more users to your site?

We would be interested in partnering with the likes of idlebrain.com and are talking with supergoodmovies.com. Our film site has working partnership with kolkatatube.com. We sponsor some events along with them.

Tell us about yourself.

I did my chemical engineering from the Osmania University and did my MS in US but did not work there. I was a technical executive in Bakelite-Hylam and was Manager of R&D in Hyderabad Industries. I then worked as the COO for 8 years in Ybrant Technologies, which we built and developed from scratch.

160by2.com plans Ads even on missed calls

G. Ram Mohan

Jun 07, 2010

Sending an SMS to your near and dear ones has become so cool and a fad of sorts with the Gen X increasingly banking on the free service providers. With Andhra Pradesh being one of the most internet savvy states, it is no wonder that city-based service providers of free SMS have turned into the most successful ventures in the country.

www.160by2.com, a city-based free SMS provider owned by SMSCountry Networks Pvt. Ltd., figures in the list of the most successful ventures in this segment. Therefore, it is not surprising that a casual search on Google for free SMS service providers within the country and internationally throws up links to the company.

The company recently increased the character count that can be sent by users from 80 to 140 in line with its user base of youth who go gaga over Twitter and Facebook and still want more and are never tired of them.

Sensing the growing number of smart phone users in the country, the company recently developed a free-to-download mobile application that brings in a new dimension to SMSing and backup storage, as users of the service can use the mobile’s native phone book contacts for sending a message.
   
The application can be downloaded from http://m.160by2.com/app on the mobile phone, once installed users can register and start sending messages. The 250KB easy-to-download application runs on mobile phones with Symbian 60 third edition operating system.

 In an exclusive interview given to www.andhrabusiness.com, Satya Kalyan Yerramsetti, CEO, SMSCountry Networks Pvt. Ltd. delved into the various aspects of the company.

 Excerpts from the interview:

   
What is the current number of users registered on your site? How are you promoting the site?

 Our current user base is 8.1 million. Our promotion is mostly by word-of-mouth by our users. We, in fact, sponsor cultural and annual events in colleges targeting our user base and draw maximum mileage out of them.

What was the increase in percentage terms in sending SMS by users during Christmas and the New Year?

There was around 30 per cent rise in the number of users during Christmas and New Year this year.

Are you planning to roll out free SMS services to US where the premium users could come from, increasing the scope for premium product advertisements which can turn into more revenue?

e-mails are more in vogue and are more in use by Indians in the United States. Unlike India and many other countries, receivers of SMS are charged in the US. So, we promote sending SMS by our users in US to India. Policies there are also veering around to sending them free of cost and could happen soon.

You recently increased the number of characters users can send from 80 to 140. Has it resulted in increasing your user base? Are you planning any further improvements on the site?

The user base of the company has started increasing after the increase in character count. Users who had accounts with other service providers along with ours are now relying on us more. We want to make 160by2.com a social networking site of sorts. People had networked even before Facebook and Twitter entered into picture through phones. This is an untapped segment which we want to use now. Maybe, we can make the phone numbers and details among friends accessible to one another to help them network.

Currently, receivers of SMS do not know anything about the receivers of the same SMS sent to multiple mobiles. We will enable them to know the others on the network bringing the concept of Twitter into it and like Facebook allow people to follow others who send interesting SMS which keep doing the rounds there after. The facility will be launched shortly and is currently at the trial stage.

Will this not affect your advertisers as their message gets shorter? How are you addressing this dicey situation?

We do not place advertisements on every SMS sent. They are placed depending on the keyword used in the message for example an SMS with coffee as a word could have an advertisement from Barista which helps in increasing the recall value for the company. Any message consisting of the word 'congratulations' in it can have Cadbury advertisement and a positive message could promote Britannia GoodDay and the word hungry could be followed with Dominos message.

We have found that not all users use even the 80 characters limit we placed on them earlier. Most messages were found to be even shorter. We take different versions of advertisement from companies and place them, depending on the message being sent.

Are you planning to further expand your company into other services? What is your current headcount? How much investment was pumped into the venture before you broke even?

Our current headcount is 315 and have offices across the country at 12 locations. Our headquarters is in Hyderabad, where all the technical work is done. In the other centres, we only have our marketing teams. We invested nearly Rs 4 crore before we could break even.

What is your revenue model?

All brands and media planning agencies are our potential clients. We have carried advertisements with their offers from the likes of Jet Airways, Kingfisher during the off season and mainly during the downturn. Bakery chains like Mongini's cakes, which has anywhere between 200 to 300 outlets in Mumbai, Bhubaneshwar and other places, uses our services. We have arrangements with IRCTC of Indian Railways. Any query about railway services to 139 through their IVRS (interactive voice response system) through mobile will get an SMS from us.

Placing advertisements in missed call alerts and messages received after recharging mobile phones are running in the pilot stage and will be launched soon. We place our advertisements basing on the profile of the customer.

We work with ad networks like Komli media, Admagnet, Tyroo among others. They pay us on the basis of CPM (cost per thousand impressions) that is the number of views of the page. Brand promotion is done through us. We have an in-house sales team with 200 guys.

How do you ensure that your SMS service is not used to send bulk messages for commercial use? Do you have a facility for those who want to pay and avail this service from you?

If a user sends messages to more than 10 users at a time, we get a flag, that is, we are alerted. Users are barred from sending more than 500 messages per day. For users who want to use our bulk messages service, we provide them tools and technology on the SaaS (software as a service) model. But, they are not sent via 160by2.com facilities.

What is the my Ads option all about? Is it to enable your users post ads directly free of cost? How will this service be of use to 160by2.com?

The 'My Ads' option, which is offered free of cost, is like the classified advertisement in a newspaper. Users can send an SMS with their own advertisements for purposes like selling a house, plot, or an article. This is an  option given to drive more users into the site.

What is the arrangement between you and the mobile companies? They normally collect termination charges from other mobile companies.

We have arrangements with mobile companies including the new players in the realm. We buy the facility in bulk from them to deliver SMSs. The differential between what we pay to the mobile operators and what we get from advertisers is what is revenue for us.

Any plan to launch voice mail services? And what about launching the facility of sending SMS in vernacular languages?

We are discussing and researching launch of these facilities. We are discussing with a company, Matro Maharshi, to outsource the facility of sending SMS in vernacular languages. The trend of sending voice SMS was evident during elections. We are planning to go for it in future. Market is not yet ready for their launch, so we are keeping our fingers crossed. To launch them, we need to know how many are chatting and searching in local languages. Only then, we can zero in on whether to go ahead or not.

 Do you have a presence in any other business?

One of our other ventures is www.ygoy.com. It is a portal with tips on health and lifestyle related ailments with sub websites on nail care, arthritis and home remedies. We give updates on the remedies frequently. They are written by our in-house team of 35 members who are persons with psychology and other backgrounds, but not doctors as such.

We have some writers also from China, Finland, Indonesia and three from the US. It has crossed the breakeven stage long back and relies entirely on Google advertisements. The target audience are those in the West, while 85 per cent are from US the rest are from Europe.

Tell us about yourself and how you zeroed-in on starting this venture?

I am a B.Tech from Vasavi College of Engineering, Hyderabad. I then went on to do my MBA from the University of Western Sydney in Sydney, Australia. Mr Raju, co-founder of the venture and currently Director of technology of the company was with a company which provided SMS services to Tata Cellular. He goaded me into starting this venture and currently holds a stake in it.

Online Ads turn Ybrant indeed

G. Ram Mohan

Jun 04, 2010    

HYDERABAD: With the traditional media like the newspapers and a surfeit of TV channels scurrying, vying for attention and eyeballs, the consumer spoilt for choice has become the king. Getting his/her attention according to the needs, choices and preferences tailor-made for them thus attains added importance. No wonder, advertisers are increasingly banking on target advertising which is facilitated by digital marketing.

It’s here the new media enabled digital marketing provides the flexibility and the room for manoeuvre for advertisers to zero-in on the exact profile of customers they want to reach out to. No wonder, Ybrant Digital, a Hyderabad-based digital marketing player, has grown from strength to strength through both organic and inorganic routes and now boasts of presence in 16 countries spanning across continents of Europe, Latin America, North America and Asia.

Digital media channels which now account for more than 10 per cent of overall worldwide advertising spend is expected to touch approximately 21 per cent by 2014 with the United States still being the primary market for digital marketing. Internet advertising revenues in the United States spiked by 10.6 per cent to US$ 23.4 billion in 2008 as compared to 2007.

“We help run advertisements by buying traffic instead of space for running them. The same website can have different advertisements in different geographies targeting a particular segment of the population. We promote companies and monetize on traffic. The advent of smart phones which are internet enabled will open another platform for us,” said Suresh Reddy, Chairman and CEO of Ybrant Digital, who runs the US $ 70-million YBrant group speaking with andhrabusiness.com.

Excerpts from interview:

Now that you have filed your DRHP, how much do you plan to raise through the IPO? What is the stake you plan to divest through it?

It is true that we had filed the DRHP but pulled out in view of the slowdown. We have acquired three companies after that. The size of the company has increased, so everything from the size of the issue, to the stake to be divested to the lead banker has to be reworked.

Oridian, an Israeli company, Dreamad-an Argentina company with offices in four Latin American nations and Max Interactive in Australia figure among the companies acquired. We are looking at more acquisitions in the near term. The IPO will probably be announced this year.

How many clients have you added recently, apart from the 140 clients like Yahoo!, Capitalone, Vayan marketing, Ad Dynamics, and SEO Inc?

We keep adding clients on a daily basis. They change from time to time. We have added another 20 advertising agencies to our clientele. We deal with top advertisers, publishers and agencies like Vodafone, Pepsi, Adidas, Sony, msn, yahoo, photobucket, hi5, Ogilvy and Mediacom among others.

What is the current head count of the company? How is digital advertising different and better from the traditional media?

The current head count of the company is 350. In a newspaper or TV, you are not sure how many have actually used it. We have the technology to track the number of users to know how many are materializing into buyers and thus can target advertisements at a particular segment of the populace. We can track the traffic and revenue flow.

The medium enables even small players like cookery sites, motorcycle enthusiasts, sites which promote student loans from banks which are not big enough to have separate advertisement departments but have decent number of users. This medium enables them to have advertisements related to their niche area and get end revenue. We can facilitate this by what is called affiliate marketing and will foray into it shortly.

 How are you marketing your services? Do you use SEO, SEM services?

 We have marketing professionals across Europe and other parts of the world, attend trade shows and announce new products through SEO (search engine optimization) on some services.

What is your share of the online advertisement revenue market? How do you plan to scale it up?

The online advertisement revenue market worldwide is worth around $ 45 billion. The industry is very fragmented and the largest player valueclick.com, based in the United States, is only half-a-billion dollar in size. The industry is growing Y-O-Y and compared to the 2 per cent advertisement spend in 2002, the medium now attracts 10 per cent in US. In India, it is still less than 2 per cent. In the United Kingdom, it has crossed 10 per cent and during the dotcom boom, it was between 15 and 20 per cent. The reason for its growth is it’s a trackable medium where the user reach can be tracked.

The industry is in for consolidation. Our goal is to be one of the bigger ones. We are looking at both organic and inorganic route to scale up in size. We hope to buy more companies in the digital marketing segment. We want to get into affiliate marketing.

 What is your revenue model? Explain about the arrangement you have with advertisement agencies and online publishers? Among the many services you offer which service generates more revenue for your company?

We buy traffic from publishers and sell it to advertisers in the form that they want and help optimize their campaign. Based on the geography and other parameters, advertisements can be targeted. The publishers can hedge themselves against any delay in payments, we take care of these things.

    If needed, we can also pitch in and prepare advertisements for our clients. The smaller companies bank on us for these services. An advertisement given in one format can be changed into various formats and used.

    Our revenue comes in three ways: 1. banner advertising- which gives us the maximum revenue.

    2. Services- Our technology is used by publishers and advertising agencies.

    3. Search marketing- Outside Google, there is a lot of advertising, we deal with that search word related spend.
   
Your VoloMp solution site claims it can send up to a maximutwo crore (20 million) mails a day. How do you ensure that they don’t end up in the spam box so that your clients gain the maximum mileage?

We ensure that the e-mails sent by us do not end up in the spam boxes by working with white-listed IPs. We talk with the likes of Hotmail, Yahoo, Google and get them this option. The client gets himself white-listed. We give the technology to the clients. There is a process called opt-in. Users are sought permission to send mails to them. Verified double opt-ins are counted and then mails are sent.

Tell us about the latest trends in online advertising? How do you see the growth in this segment? How has recession impacted this segment?

Online social media is catching up and has emerged as a powerful tool on the internet. Farmville started by Zynga Game Network Inc. now has 50 million users having just started in June, 2009. Gaming is becoming huge and the user base is 25 to 30 year olds who have become addicted to them. Mobile marketing will catch up with the launch of 3G and the advent and penetration of smart phones into the market. The scope for some arrangement between telecom companies and internet service providers are likely to improve as some like Bharti Airtel are into both the services.

During the slowdown, brand marketing that is CPM (cost per impressions) got affected while CPA (cost per leads/ customer acquisition, which means the viewer has bought the product) has picked up and improved. We shifted from our CPM-centric approach to CPA because of this. Performance marketing has taken precedence over brand marketing.

How did you hit upon starting Ybrant Digital? How is your first venture Usagreetings.com faring currently?

We first started usagreetings.com in 1999 during the dotcom boom period. We also started a dotcom company and found that many dotcoms needed manpower and technology and advertisements for survival. We provided a platform for them initially and then became a company which markets digital advertisement traffic in a logical progression of events then shifted to India in 2001 and began to build Ybrant Digital. Our first venture usagreetings.com is not owned by us any more. We have sold it.

Are there plans to make YReach service available for other cities. Will new categories be introduced?

Our plan is to take YReach to cities like Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Delhi initially in the next six months. YReach is similar to justdial.com in that it facilitates search of various things on a particular geographical area. Unlike justdial.com which is a yellow page kind of search, YReach is more of a lifestyle related search tool which targets the young yuppies who are web savvy and have the deep pockets to splurge. With both the sexes working now, we hope to make their entertainment easier by giving them lifestyle solutions.

YReach can be contacted through SMS, phone or through the web by logging into the site. Movie tickets can be bought through our website. We have a partnership with bookmyshow.com for this.  We are expanding the database on YReach based on the needs of users. We are more into e-marketing than e-commerce in line with our philosophy.

Tell us about yourself.

I am basically a B.Tech in mechanical engineering from IIT, Kharagpur. Then I did my MS from the Iowa State University in US. I then worked for companies like Caterpillar and Chrysler where I did structural simulation. I was hence comfortable with software related things. Then I switched to Charles Schwabb, a financial house and did software development for them and also for AT&T (Pacific Bell). I then moved to India in 2001 to start Ybrant Digital.

About my reading habits, I normally like to read books on business, philosophy and sometimes fiction also.

Croon your way to fame on muzigle.com

G.Ram Mohan

Jun 08, 2010

For a nation which introduced musical instruments like veena, flute and tabla to the world, the current state of Indian music which is increasingly turning movie-centric is surely a reason to ponder.

Unlike Western countries where anybody with talent can prepare a music album and work their way up the success ladder, avenues to showcase new talent are minimal in India.

Started by enthusiasts who want to promote Indian music, the ambience of the office of www.muzigle.com in Hyderabad aims to fill this void by promoting them. The office, which itself is draped and decked with flex covering of musical instruments, captures what the website aims to achieve.

“For a country which gave ‘sapta swaras’ to the world, going gaga over and getting buoyed by a single Oscar is preposterous. It only mirrors the dire straits Indian music is in and shows it needs to be supported.

 In the next phase, we will facilitate the coming together of the lyricist, tune and the music composer in the virtual world from anywhere and collaborate to create music. We will have an online synthesizer which will do this.

"Of the slew of flicks made in the country, on an average only 50 songs become chartbusters and the rest end up a damp squib. We are the first player in the digital platform who intends to promote Indian music,” said Anand Kuchibotla, co-founder and CEO of www.muzigle.com.

Why did you want to start the mugizle.com?

 Indian music has become movie-centric, which by itself is no cause for inspiration with woeful lacking of originality, creativity and is frequently plagiarised. There are many genres of Indian music but getting exposure to them has become next to impossible. In the West, anybody can become a Michael Jackson by bringing out musical albums.

In the olden days, All India Radio was the only place whether enthusiasts could hope of showing their talent. The reality shows on the idiot box provide such a scope. Our aim is to do it on the digital platform. We want to promote music talent and hope to be the biggest social network for global Indians. The beta version of the site was launched 10 days back.

Many of us who hum songs, desire in our heart of hearts, to karaoke to the foot-tapping numbers of A.R. Rahman or Ilayaraja. Our website allows them to sing to their tunes and record them online and share with friends through social networking sites like Facebook. This is the first of its kind to do it on the digital platform. We don’t tie-up talent to ourselves and allow them to sing for any other musical sites and companies too.

Tell us something about the website?

Our main aim is to showcase new and up-and-coming Indian talent in music. Facility to karaoke is the coolest feature on our site. One can even post his/her video if the PC or laptop has a webcam and post them on Facebook and ask friends to vote for them.

Any body can market their music on our website by uploading it for free. If young musicians come to us, we create microsite for them. When they start getting revenue, we will share it with them. But the artiste is free to sign up with anyone else without any objections. Every artiste with us will have a dashboard. The artiste will get to know how many have listened to him and downloaded everything is transparent.

Your website has a section for events. Would you please elaborate on that? Do you organize music related events?
 
Anybody can post their music related events in the website. They can even post their video version also.

Who are your website’s target group?

People who are basically music lovers are our target group, the NRIs especially. Indians living in Sydney would want to buy and hear Indian music. Physically carrying the music CDs and DVDs is not feasible on long distance travel.

These sections can come to us for any kind of music. We have music in all Indian languages and genres. Though we have and sell Bollywood and Tollywood music, we mainly showcase independent music talent.
 
What is the revenue model of your website? What was the initial investment? What is your current headcount?

We provide music of all Indian languages in different genres. We hope to get revenue from three sources: revenue from downloads of music, ringtones and advertisement revenue. We are yet to market our website for this. Our current headcount is 25. The site is maintained from US but have some operations like mixing done from our office in Hyderabad.

This venture was angel funded to the tune of one million dollars to start with. Going further, at a later stage, we will raise money through venture capitalists once we evaluate it. The website was started about a year ago and has received some rave reviews for its music player.

We have agreements with the likes of Sony, Tips, Venus, Sarigama, Aditya with the latest and the oldest lilting songs. All our content is legally licensed from them. Our platform will allow people to share music without boundaries across the world.
 
How are you going to promote the website?

We are adopting all available means to promote the site. The site has 1,200 fans on Facebook. We are using SEO (search engine optimization), online advertisement, e-mail marketing, SEM (search engine marketing) and affiliate marketing.

Tell us about Siliconandhra.org and its activities.

I am the co-founder of muzigle.com and founded www.siliconandhra.org. I have a passion for Indian art and culture and come across lot of talent. I want to make my passion and profession the same. Siliconandhra had held an event with 1,60,000 singers who sang Annamacharya kirtanas in Secunderabad parade grounds. Through the manabadi initiative we teach Telugu in 16 states in the United States.

Tell us about yourself.

I did my M.A in economics from Andhra University and did MS in paper technology in US. Living in US for the past 23 years, I still carry my Indian passport with pride and retain my roots here. My children are also into classical dance. I was into marketing for 16 years and was in-charge of global marketing for Yahoo, country manager for India for Kimberley-Clark which makes diapers like Huggies and worked for Dialpad, an internet telephony company.

Have you had your financial health checked-up?

G. Ram Mohan

Ever felt handicapped in choosing the best investment avenue? Scared by the voluminous paper work that is to be done to file your tax returns? Then www.investmentyogi.com is your best bet to navigate through the maze of these problems and bail you out.

“I initially wanted to start a similar portal in the US. But after looking at the widespread financial illiteracy in the country on trips to India, we found that there is immense potential in India for a product like this,” said Ms Mamtha Banerjee, CEO, InvestmentYogi.com, speaking to AndhraBusiness.com.

1. What is the USP of Investment Yogi?
HNI’s (high net worth individuals) in the country are better informed and bank on bigger firms, while the middle class is left to fend for themselves. We hope to help middle class Indians make smart investment decisions. We wish to fill this void by making the middle class financial literate.

We made the first online financial planning software which can calculate and predict a persons monthly cash flow till they turn 85. We do a financial health check-up of the investor’s income, expenditure, investments and liabilities, know their financial goals like education, buying a house, car and recommend asset allocation depending on their targets and suggest on how much and where to save and invest?

While the software is free for use by individuals, financial advisers will get a more sophisticated version on the SaaS (Software as a service) model. They will be able to make a plan within 30 minutes to their customers.

We are planning to offer finanial advice on mutual funds and stocks also and extend to the full range of financial platform. All queries posed by our users are answered by both in-house and outside financial experts.

2. What is the revenue model of your website?

Our online tax filing software called www.taxyogi.com was free for use until last year. From this year, the service will be charged. The product launched last year was used by around 5,000 people and expect at least 20,000 people will use it as we are marketing it this year.

The financial planning software has already been used by 2,000 people. Some other websites also want their financial planning part to be powered by us and hope to sign four or five deals shortly. Content provision is also a source of income as our content is also published by rediff.

 3. Tell us about your marketing strategies.

 The company is using a combination of strategies like SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing). We are using social media like facebook, orkut and twitter. To help increase awareness about mutual funds we have posted online videos on you tube.
 Our content is also being syndicated with others. Special packages are being offered to reach out to our core constituency, the corporate employees, through seminars on investments.

4.    Are you planning to tie-up with any company? What is the scope for expansion of your business as you see it? Will it be organic or inorganic growth?

 To scale up the business we initially want to take the organic growth route by piggybacking on a venture capitalist. There are lot of companies which are in the segments complimentary to us. For example there are sites which work exclusively on online insurance, online trading, mutual funds, stock, equity or others. A lot of collaboration can happen initially in the form of exchanging users leading to inorganic growth in some cases.

 5. What is the market potential of your business?

 The potential of this business has not been quantified. In five years, we hope to be earning $50 million in revenue.

 6. What was the investment that went into establishing the company? Have you achieved breakeven?

 We have invested close to half a million dollars so far and hope to achieve breakeven by the end of the year. Our current headcount is 10. Some of our functions like SEO and SEM are outsourced, while all the development on the site is done in-house. Our chief technology officer is based in Dallas and the financial planner is in California.

7. Which are the other countries you have investors routing their investments through your company?

 We have people from 50 countries routing their investments through us.

 8.Tell us about your online integrated platform for taxes, investments and budgeting. Have you launched the ‘Software as a service’ (SaaS) product that you had planned to launch?

 The SaaS product is in the pilot stage. A few people in the field are using it and will be released in August after the tax season.

 9. Who are your competitors in the market?

 Indirectly, there are many competitors like moneycontrol.com, financial planners and banks which are trying to increase their fee based income selling insurance products.

10. Has the trend of filing tax returns online picked up? What has been the growth in percentage terms? Are they going to replace CA’s?

Around 45 lakh people filed their income tax returns online last year. In the last two years, there has been a 40 per cent growth in online tax filing. Only complicated tax returns will need CA’s. They make more money by auditing businesses.

Filing tax returns online is environmentally friendly, open 24/7, saves time for CA’s as they are busy and burdened as all flock to them at the same time. 

11. How will simplification of tax norms affect this process?

 As the process of filing tax returns is simplified more and more people will file them online. In the US 90 per cent of the market is served by turbotax.com. The regulations there are more stringent compared to our country.

12. Are you eyeing NRI customers?

 We have content tailor-made for NRIs and can show them various investment options in India through partners. They can seek help in buying real estate also.

13. Tell us something about your background. What prompted you to start a portal like InvestmentYogi? 

I went to US for my masters in the University of Illinois and then worked in Chicago for a software company. Then joined Travelocity.com and worked for 10 years, which ranks number one in that segment. After this, I did an executive management programme at the University of Washington.

Initially, I thought of doing something like this in the US but on one of the trips to India foreigners advised us to do it in India-the new land of opportunities. I met a lot of financial advisers and sought suggestions but felt they were not complete.

At the same time, I observed in discussions with cousins that everybody seems to know about stocks but drew a blank when it comes to mutual funds. People tend to see insurance as an investment option and take policies on a non-working member of the family instead of the breadwinner.

As part of our CSR (corporate social responsibility), we want to promote financial literacy among the low-income groups in the next two to five years. We are based in the IIIT campus here as their Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is helping start-ups like us grow as part of their incubation programme.