|
|
             |
BT DOTCOM: STATS & STRATS What's Hot! Big daddy SAIL joins hands-on-line-with TISCO and Kalyani Steel, and the emerging battle for WAP access takes an interesting turn thanks to Cellmania's tie-up with Airtel. e-news
 Monster.com, the world's largest on-line
recruitment portal, is reportedly giving final touches to its India
entry strategy. Aussie media tycoon Kerry Packer's Net company E-Corp
is negotiating with the US-based TMP Worldwide Inc., which controls
Monster.com. Packer's partner in India, HFCL, may also participate in
this Net venture.
e-alliances
e-tcetera
-Aparna Ramalingam & Praveen S. Thampi BT's Aparna Ramalingam has an on-line chat with Alok Mittal, COO, jobsahead.com.
A. Zipahead is India's leading youth site and is doing extremely well. Even without advertising and other means of promotion, it enjoys half-a-million page-views and a registered user-base of over 160,000. Isn't jobsahead.com's new Voice MailX facility a techno-gimmick? No. It's, in fact, a quick response to the growing needs of HR managers. With voice-resumés, the recruiter can assess the qualitative dimensions of a job-seeker's personality, like his communications skills, and his level of confidence, which is vital in fields like hospitality and remote services. Fine. But do you think that the non-infotech Indian job market is ready for Net-based hiring? The on-line recruitment market is skewed towards infotech because of the penetration of PCs in this segment. However, more and more non-infotech corporates have begun to realise the power of the Net. As a response, we have segregated JobsAhead's on-line recruitment services into different communities (eight, as of now). What's the gameplan to take on global giants like Monster.com? We welcome them. JobsAhead is on a strong footing because ours is a relationship-driven business. We have extremely strong relationships with over 2,500 corporates, which, coupled with our local experience and value-delivery, has made us India's top e-recruiting site. What's next? We plan to align or acquire strategic players in the international on-line and off-line job-market. We also plan to take our Fast Trak career fair beyond the metropolises to other cities as well. Customer durable firms are scrambling on-line. Why?
Sales worth Rs 4.5 crore in one month, an average of 300 orders per day, a surprising 3,000 orders on the last day of the contest, and 3.75 lakh page-views every day. No, this is not amazon.com, but our very own jaldi.com. A month-long, 30 per cent discount offered by Jaldi was the reason for the deluge. And consumer durables were the hottest-selling item during the discount period. Exults Jaldi.com's portly promoter, Kumud Goel, 41: ''The Indian consumer is discerning, but willing to experiment with new shopping media if the value proposition is strong.'' Now, we know that shopping for consumer durables is a non-starter in the Indian netspace. You know it well: 'time poverty' is not pronounced in India-and shopping itself is perceived as a leisure, touch-feely activity, despite the choice being limited in brick stores. Add to that perennial problems like double-digit penetration level for consumer durables and measly single-digit penetration level for PCs. Then there's this ratted payment mechanism lacuna. So why on Earth is everybody excited about selling fridges, TVs, and the like on the Net? Why indeed? Indian consumer durable manufacturers like LG's lgezbuy.com and Philips' philipsindia.com are the first e-tailing ventures. Explains Ajay Kapila, 37, Veep (Marketing), LG: ''e-tailing is a capability for tomorrow that is being used as a channel for building organisational capability, and developing infrastructure for the future.'' Other biggies like Samsung, Sony, and Carrier-Aircon are scurrying to enable their sites for e-Commerce. Says J.H. Park, 44, Veep (Marketing), Samsung: ''At Samsung, we view the Net as a channel for supplementing our (traditional) sales channel.'' And there are also e-Commerce sites like jaldi.com, which compete with manufacturers. For the record, none see the Net as a viable business proposition for the next three-to-five years. Predictably, most manufacturers are using the Net to target niche markets, the home pc user, and the pc segment in general. LG, for instance, has uploaded 100 per cent of its portfolio on the site and recently launched two products-an mp3 player and an audio CD player-on the Net. Explains LG's Kapila: ''These products have not penetrated through traditional retail channels and the stores don't have the demonstration capabilities to handle them.'' Indeed, the consumer durables e-tailing experience has shown that some products are more suited to sales on the Net. In short, they are premium, high-technology products that cater to the Net-savvy pc users-mp3 players, pc monitors, or zip drives. Here Sony has the products, and the precedence, as this is something it is implementing in the US on-line markets. For example, Philips has sold two plasma TVS and seven DVDs on the jaldi.com site. ''Products that are compact, standardised, and are non-traditional, are more likely to sell on the Net,'' says Rajeev Karwal, 37, Senior Veep, Philips. But manufacturers' sites are at a disadvantage when it comes to on-line shopping for consumer durables. Consumers want information-and comparison. For that they would need independent third parties such as planetcustomer.com to develop ratings and comparisons. Says James Abraham, 31, Director, The Boston Consulting Group: ''Manufacturers' sites are not helpful in comparisons due to inherent biases. They will have difficulty in offering good, reliable, and believable comparisons.'' Apart from that, the inability to present a wide brand choice is a major limiting factor for manufacturers' sites. They cannot also work around pricing, in terms of cross-category promos. Multi-brand e-Commerce sites can, by bundling a high-margin and low-margin product for the consumer. Meanwhile, manufacturers have to sell at the maximum retail price. Rues Kapila: ''The company site and dealers are symbiotic, but the unauthorised retailing and e-tailing creates conflict. Some sites are using discounts to drive traffic to their sites and increase valuations.'' Everybody is wary of upsetting the traditional channels. Says Samsung's Park: ''The best approach for selling through the Net without upsetting the dealers is to have consistent pricing-and definitely not lower than the dealer price for the product.'' Adds Karwal: ''We will provide information about all products on our site, but will not sell traditional products on-line.'' For starters, the manufacturers' would do well to handle-on-line as well as off-line-consumer complaints effectively. e-Commerce will follow. -Vinod Mahanta Surprise, surprise. An on-line variant of Star Plus' Kaun Banega Crorepati. The site's called lacpati.com, and no, it's not up yet. Due to be uploaded in October, 2000, lacpati.com promises to give Rs 1 lakh per day to the person who answers 15 questions in the shortest time. The revenue model: each visitor attempting to go for the jackpot will be charged Re 1. Says Prem Sawney, 53, Chairman of Zenergy, the promoters of the game show: ''We are expecting over 100,000 hits from the very first day.'' To ensure that visitors to the site can pay the minuscule sum, lacpati.com has already signed up with smart cc.com and uthplanet.com, which provide micro-payment solutions, and is also talking to hdfc Bank. The game show will take a dip into Britannica's knowledge- pool for the questions. Says Alok Wadhwa, 37, Managing Director, Encyclopedia Britannica India: ''We have a one-year contract and we are being paid per question.'' Sawney says that Zenergy has enough cash to keep going for one year after the launch. Even so, sans Amitji, wait a while before saying, click kiya jayay! -Ashutosh Sinha |
|
Issue Contents Write to us Subscriptions Syndication INDIA TODAY | INDIA TODAY PLUS | COMPUTERS TODAY © Living Media India Ltd |
 |
 |
Q. What happened to your launchpad y-ortal
zipahead.com? Isn't sibling jobsahead.com way ahead?