Konsulenti – The Strategy Challenge

Event Case

Presented by Backwaters v2.10 and Indiabooms

 “Local search engine is the need of the hour, if SME’s and local businesses have to compete
against the multinationals” is what Mr. Bannerjee, Co-founder and CEO of indiabooms.com
believes in. Having managed various call centres and close interaction with local SME’s and
business houses in Kolkata, Mr. Bannerjee realised that there is an urgent need to put these
businesses on internet and provide them with an eco-system which will help the best of local
businesses to survive the intense competition.

Internet is where the business is shifting to and the rapid pace at which entire India (and world at
large) is getting electronically integrated, poses a big challenge as to how the convergence of
internet, telephony and other means of communication can best be used to strategically develop a
local search engine which can empower SME’s and local businesses to run and compete
effectively.

Started in October 2009, Indiabooms currently has local search engine portal ready. Indiabooms
have close to 1 million free listing of various businesses across cities in more than 4000 sub-
categories (like Computer->Hardware->Headphone, Restaurants->Pubs). Indiabooms have also
thought of implementing 3 other specific search business: job search, healthcare/hospital search
and online grocery store (grocery store initially to be launched only in Kolkata). Job search is
almost ready and have close to 0.5 million registered CV’s. Work in Healthcare/Hospital search
and online grocery is still in initial stages, with database being populated. Idea behind these 3
lines of business is to boost the user visits and attract online visitors by offering them a slew of
functionalities that is of their regular use and would make difference to their normal lives.

Indiabooms did start their local search engine operation both online and phone based (just for
Mumbai) in May 2010, but after 2 months of running had to temporarily shut down their
operations due to various reasons. Some of the reasons discovered by Mr. Bannerjee were lack of
internal organisational structure, lack of clear strategy as to how to position Indiabooms different
from its competitor and various operational and marketing related issues.

For last 4 months from May to September, Mr. Bannerjee has been analyzing and working on
these various issues. And at the same time he is continuing to enrich Indiabooms database
through non-voice call centres across various regions of India. When further probed, Mr.
Bannerjee realized that he needs more than just frill’s to convince SME’s and local businesses to
get listed on his portal. Some of the features and services that Indiabooms aims to provide are:

1. Phone based search facility where in users can dial 60001444 anywhere in India and their
queries will be answered
2. Web based local search with an improved search algorithm which will include various
parameters to make sure the best listed local businesses are shown as top results, hence
the best will survive
3. Sub-domain for small SME’s (like www.indiabooms.com/AdityaHospital) with various
features like company introduction, integrated Google map to show their exact location,
product presentation/video etc. completely managed by Indiabooms

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But Mr. Bannerjee realises that these services are not enough to convince local businesses to get
listed by becoming paid members, and would require an all together a competitive analysis as to
what kind of services are being offered across world in local search engine based model, what
international services/features can be mapped to Indian consumer scenario? Some of the
international sites can be found at How To Get Your Business Listed on Local Search Engines,
Online Yellow Pages & Local Social Sites

When it comes to marketing plan, Mr. Bannerjee realises that Indiabooms traditionally suffered
from the classic push-pull problem. Businesses like these are double edged sword. When one
tries to get a business listed, they come up with questions like “who knows your site”, “are you
famous”, “no. of daily visitors portal has”, “national ranking, strategic advantage, immediate
cost-benefit” etc. At the same time when internet visitors come looking for local search/services,
they need established verified results which can happen only when businesses start getting
themselves listed on paid basis along with features that can help businesses be well placed in
front of internet visitors.

To generate initial internet traffic Mr. Bannerjee has provided few features like cricket score,
web based free sms, online games etc., but at the same time other features/entertainment/need
needs to be analyzed and implemented to improve traffic and Alexa ranking. All this would
require careful marketing plan: mix of traditional as well as online promotions. He believes once
traffic increases, people will start exploring the web and simultaneously use phone based local
search and that is where his improved local search engine and various integrated services will
give Indiabooms an edge.

Along with marketing, operational problems arise too. Given that this a pan-India based model, it
is important to make sure that right number of call centres (inbound Vs. Outbound) are opened
across major metropolitan cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai etc. Each city where call centres
(both inbound and outbound) becomes operational needs to be backed by sufficient marketing
and promotional campaigns so that people in those cities become aware about Indiabooms and
the kind of service they offer. The balance and the sequence of opening call centres have to be
carefully planned, given the limited nature of budget.

Mr. Bannerjee has managed to sort out the internal issues and as first step has decided to hire you
and your team as professional consultants to help him resolve the operational and marketing
issues, as well as provide them with a strategic road-map to distinguish themselves from others
over a period of time. As consultants these are few questions you need to be looking at to help
Mr. Bannerjee with:

1) Competitive and feature analysis of both Indian (JustDial, Sulekha etc.) and international
(http://www.locallytype.com/pages/submit.htm) local search engine service providers
2) Apart from the existing features, what other service can be conceived and provided
through sub-domain. How can pricing be equated to these features to make a package
(existing feature and feature packages is provided in annexure)

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 3) Two revenue models identified are a) Paid listing b) Brand advertisement on home &
relevant pages. What other revenue models can be thought of, from both consumer and
SME’s point of view. What can be the sequence of launch of these models/services
around local search engine
4) What needs to be done to improve the Indiabooms website user relevance, eye-balls and
web-ranking (like for SEO modification what kind of relevant key words needs to be
used)
5) Marketing plan. Identifying various marketing/promotional medium for online and
traditional space. Key here is to find online mediums where promotion awareness can be
done free of cost (like creating of Wikipedia page, posting on online start-up forums etc.)
and then identifying mediums which will cost money
6) Given budget of (maximum 30 Lacs) 10 Lacs for online promotion, 2 Lacs for each
metro’s and 1 Lacs for tier-2 cities, come up with marketing-mix and marketing budget
per medium spent to obtain the maximum reach and efficiency. For ease do budget
planning just keeping New Delhi in mind
7) Identification of any other problems foreseen by you (and their solution w.r.t local search
engine), assuming you are in the hot-seat of Mr. Bannerjee

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 ANNEXURE
1) Web URL: www.indiabooms.com (Please use http://indiabooms.co.in/information to
explore the search functionality. There might be issues with website as it is undergoing
enhancement)
2) Team
structure

3) No. of resume’s in job database: 0.5 million

4) No. of free listings of business: 1 million
5) No. of categories: 250 approx. (as in clothes, computers, electronics etc.)
6) No. of sub-categories: 4400 approx.
7) Programming Language: PHP
8) Web hosting on www.Godaddy.com, have hired a dedicated server which can handle
simultaneous login/search of up to 1 Lac users approx.
9) 1 e-mail server, which will also be used for sending SMSes
10) Bulk SMS purchased: 10 million (for free local/national SMS sending facility, SMS based
search and delivery of information through SMS)
11) Current listing packages designed:
Plan Monthly Web WAP Logo E-Mail SMS Sub- Video Product CCLS
Name Charges Listing/ Display Marketing based domain Upload Ppt.
Dev. Marketing
1. Rs. 6250        
2. Rs 5250    Limited Limited 3 Pages  Limited 
Service Service Service
3. Rs 4250    Limited Limited 3 Pages Limited Limited 
Service Service Service Service
4. Rs 3250    Limited Limited 3 Pages NA Limited 
Service Service Service
5. Rs 2250    Limited Limited NA NA Limited 
Service Service Service

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 6. Rs 1250    Limited NA NA NA NA 
Service
7. Rs 750    NA NA NA NA NA 

Wed Development/Listing: Assist SME’s in creating their home page and host these pages
on our server, along with buying of domain name and hosting rights etc.

Logo Display: Help SME’s/Enterprises to strategically display heir logo at right places
(including their sub-domain page) to attract more eye-balls

WAP: SME’s presence on WAP will also be created, so that users searching for data through
Mobile can have access to these SME’s

SMS Service/Marketing: Any kind of request about company will be send to customer
through SMS too, and at the same time provide them with SMS based cluster/targeted
marketing so that information about right products can be made available to right customers

E-Mail Service/Marketing: Any request, search about a specific product/service or

company will be mailed to user, and at the same time any kind of promotion will be taken up
my sending targeted mails to relevant customer

Video Presentation: Video content/ad about company, their products etc. will be displayed
in the company specific sub-domain page, so that a customer when looking for specific
request, lands up on the company page, get to see the video promotion and offerings

Product Presentation: Company specific presentation will be created by us (if required) and
will be uploaded on the company specific page, so that relevant user gets to see in detail
about the company and its offerings

CCLS: Customer care support through our customer care department (and related call
centre’s) will be provided to companies, and in case of users looking for specific services or
help, will be directed to listed companies in form of business leads. We make sure that real-
time feedback and company specific search statistics is show on request to enhance
transparency and the effectiveness of our services

12) Outsourcing (BPO) related terms:

Inbound - Dedicated call centres to receive calls/queries from consumers/customers

Outbound - Dedicated call centres to make business calls on behalf of Indiabooms to SME's
to convince them to get listed

Field Agent - Required for supporting outbound call centres. These agents will follow up on
leads and try and close the deal by visiting leads

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