MINOR PROJECT -2 REPORT

ON

SUBMITTED IN
PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
FOR THE AWARD OF THE
DEGREE OF POST GRADUATE DIPLOMA IN MANAGEMENT

2019-21

Project Guide By: Submitted By:

DR. Atul Rajveer singh parihar
Adm. No. : PGDM19084
Roll No : GM19137

GL Bajaj Institute of Management & Research

Approved by A.I.C.T.E., Ministry of HRD, Govt. of India
Plot No. 2, Knowledge Park III, Greater Noida
Email: director@glbimr.org; Website: www.glnimr.org

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STUDENT UNDERTAKING

This is to certify that I have completed the Project titled Competitor

analysis of naukri.com in under the guidance of Prof. Atul Arora in

partial fulfilment of the requirement for the award of degree of Post

Graduate Diploma in Management at Gl Bajaj Institute of Management &

Research, Greater Noida. This is an original piece of work & I have not

submitted it earlier elsewhere.

Name of the Student

Rajveer singh Parihar

PGDM 1st Trimester

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

My project would be incomplete if at this juncture, I did not acknowledge

those who steered my project work in the right direction.
First of all I would like to thanks Prof. Atul Arora as he proved to be
constant source of inspiration and provided timely support at crucial stages
of this project work despite the time and work constraints.
The feeling of gratitude when expressed in words is only a fraction of
acknowledgement. I feel overwhelmed to express my gratitude to all those
who extended their consistent support, guidance and encouragement to
complete this task.
Last but not the least I would like to thanks Director Dr. Ajay Kumar
(GLBIMR), for providing me with all the help and advice to me in
completing my project.

Rajveer singh parihar

(Gl Bajaj Institute of Management & Research)
PGDM 1st Trimester
Admission No. PGDM19084
Roll No. GM19137

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TABLE OF CONTENT
Chapter 1. Introduction to sector (NAUKRI.COM)
Chapter 2. Competitors of naukri.com
Chapter 3. Introduction of Major competitor (LINKDIN)
Chapter 4. Marketing analysis
Chapter 5. Financial analysis
Chapter 6. Findings
Chapter 7. Recommendation

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CHAPTER – 1 INTRODUCTION TO SECTOR/COMPANY
Naukri.com is one of those organizations which don’t need any introduction.
Naukri.com is an online job portal started by Mr. Sanjeev Bikhchandani in March
1997.The Company has its headquarter in Noida with employee strength of
approximately 5000, operating through 56 offices in 42 cities across India and overseas.
Talking about Mr.Sanjeev’s background he owns an undergraduate degree in
Economics from Delhi University and after gaining some experience of corporate world
he moved to IIM Ahmadabad for his post graduation.

He quits a lucrative management job at HMM (now Glaxo Smithkline) to start off his
own venture. The company first started providing salary review reports. These reports
consisted of data from various categories of professions like engineering and
management. Further these reports were sold to various companies as per their
requirement.Now the company is a fully fledged online recruitment portal and it
receives around 3,569,343 unique visitors and 28,554,744 page views per day hailing a
Google page rank of 6 out of 10.
Idea of Naukri.com
While Mr. Sanjeev was employed with HMM, he worked in an office premises which
was not as luxurious as we have in our present working environment. He used to sit in a
hall with his peers and what he noticed is that whenever a Business India magazine
comes to his office all were busy in reading it from start to end. In the magazine, there
were appointment ads which everyone was keen to know and discuss about, but no one
was ready to switch it because everyone was satisfied with the perks and Compensation
Company was offering.So, by the conversation surrounded by him, he noticed that
“Even if you are not looking for a job, you look for a job.
You are constantly looking for a new benchmark and checking if you are missing out on
anything” and he also found that not all the vacancies are published in those magazines,
some were hidden and those opportunities can only come to you when any headhunter
used to call to the selected candidate.By this entire day to day scenario he analyzed the
market and figured out that whatever job opportunities are published they are just the tip
of the iceberg. He understood the market potential that was below the surface, highly
fragmented and scattered between HR departments and consultant.He came to the
conclusion after all market research that this can be a powerful product and one can
make good amount of money. So not just he kept his idea on a piece of paper, but also
implemented it and you can see where it stands

Born in 1997 as Info Edge’s flagship brand, Naukri.com is today, an

industry legend.

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The revenues of naukri were 315 crore in FY 2013-14 with a consistent upward growth
rate. The no. of resumes in the database increased by 12% to about 37 million at the end
FY2014. Being a leader in its category, Naukri.com is forever pushing the boundaries
with new-edge innovations and technology. We have integrated the semantic search
mechanism from a recently acquired Company, Makesense Technologies to
significantly improve the job search of the site and make it more efficient for users
We also launched a mobile application that is based on both iOS and android platforms,
and a SAS based Career Site Manager. All these developments have received a great
response from users leading to more engaged jobseekers and satisfied customers.
Journey and Growth of Naukri.com
The company began as a bootstrapped start-up when the Internet was in its infancy.
Soon after its launch in April 1997, Naukri.com’s revenue in the first year was INR 2.35
lacs, having received their first cheque after 6 months of starting the business, simply
because they never asked for money earlier. Then in October 1997, they sent out a letter
to 3,000 companies about Naukri.com and its services. Soon, from INR 2.35 lacs, next
year when sales rose to INR 18 lacs, Sanjeev realized the huge potential of the
business.It obtained some venture capital funding in the year 2000 and has been earning
profits since 2002-03.
From an initial beginning as a job listing web page to a full-fledged online recruitment
company that has a database of more than 2.5 million resumes, more than 1,500
corporate clients, and projected revenue of INR 400 million.Naukri.com is now a
company which has all the potential to grow and compete with other companies in the
same domain. Naukri.com earns $ 28,555 per day and estimated its value as $
30,839,400. Naukri is an INR 300 billion brand now and clearly 70% of our revenues
and 120% of profit come from Naukri. It all started when Sanjeev Bikhchandani quit his
corporate job at Hindustan Milkfood Manufacturers (now Glaxo Smithkline) and
founded two companies- Info Edge and Indmark. Info Edge offered salary reports to
various categories of college graduates such as engineering and MBAs. Salary reports
were sold to companies, somewhere between ₹5,000 to ₹10,000. Sanjeev and his
business partners at Info Edge operated from servants’ quarter located in Sanjeev’s
home. In 1991, The Department of Telecom (DoT) advertised for videotext services.
Info Edge submitted the business plan to DoT and it was shortlisted. Reasons
undisclosed, the department cancelled the pilot project. This was a setback and Sanjeev
and his business partner parted ways. His partner took Indmark and he was left in
charge of Info Edge. During a visit to an IT fair at Delhi’s fair ground (Pragati Maidan),
he was drawn to a stall written WWW Curious, Sanjeev found more about how the
Internet worked. Internet was new in India in the 90s. He took help from his brother
Sushil who was residing in US to hire a server. The server was hired at a monthly rent
of $25 and Sanjeev gave 5 per cent share in his company to his brother. This is how Info
Edge India, which was then a holding company of Naukri.com was started. In May 1,
1995, it became Info Edge (India) Private Limited.[8] In 1996, recession hit and the
company suffered loss.[9] It was then Sanjeev took help from his friend Anil Lall and
shared the thought of creating the website. Anil Lall was offered 7 percent share in the
company. Another friend, VN Saroja took care of the operations. She was made 9

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percent shareholder in the company.Naukri.com was launched on April 2, 1997and the
first version of the website had 1,000 jobs collected from 29 newspapers. Reviews of
business magazines, newspaper and word-of-mouth followed. Jobseekers learnt job
search on Naukri was free, and soon more people started logging in. Traffic on
Naukri.com slowly and steadily increased. In 2012, the company launched mobile apps
for Blackberry, Android and iPhone devices] and reportedly

Business and Revenue Model

Naukri.com business model is divided into two parts:-
1) B2B – Its main product is RESDEX which provides end to end recruitment services
to various corporate companies starting from small to big giants. The services offered to
the companies are like resume database excess, vacancy listing, email marketing, SMS
marketing, etc. Major part of the company revenue is generated through this channel.
2) B2C-The Company offers various services like resume writing, profile enhancement,
recruiter reach and some premium jobs to the job seekers.
The company is generating revenue from space selling tool which means advertising
other companies directly or indirectly on its portal generating $2128 USD per day and $
63,854 USD monthly. Marketing Strategy of
Naukri.com The company believes in cross channel marketing to increase its
visibility and reliability among the target audience. As it is not possible to see the shore
of the sea in the same way their target market is not having any boundaries.
a) Digital Platform
Most of the traffic on Naukri.com website is coming from organic way and it
contributes about 51.23% of total traffic and the rest of the traffic is coming from
the below mentioned categories. 1)
Search Engine Marketing:-
It includes both organic marketing as well as inorganic. Organic means from where
the traffic is coming naturally that is SEO, while inorganic means the traffic is
coming from the paid form. 26.7% of total traffic is coming from Search engine
marketing and SEO contributes 96.16% of total searches while the rest of the
traffic to its website comes from a paid form of search engine marketing.
2) Social Media Marketing:-
Social Media marketing contributes about 1.25% of total traffic to its websites in which
Facebook contributes about 70 % of the traffic and rest 30% comes from Twitter,
LinkedIn, and YouTube etc

Naukri.com PARENT COMPANY INFOEDGE mission and vision

Mission : We will continuously delight our customers in current and new businesses by
delivering superior value through enhanced offerings on the internet and other
platforms. We will do this by preserving our entrepreneurial spirit and leveraging our

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financial strength and expertise in building brands, communities, product and
technology; and sales and service

Vision: To create world class platforms that transform lives

Naukri.com has traffic share of more than 70 per cent

In the last two decades, the job search industry has seen a major shift from offline to
online. Naukri.com, the leading job search portal in the county, is continuously evolving
itself on the technology front to keep up with the demand.

In an interaction with exchange4media, Sumeet Singh, CMO, Info Edge, explained the
marketing strategy of Info Edge and how they are getting personal with the customers to
showcase the best result possible in real time.

“Today is the era of personalization, everyone is getting used to a personalized feed and
thus as a company, we have embarked on that journey too
Were you clear even in those days what was involved in running a company?
No clue! But I knew that I didn't want to join government service, after my father's
experience, because in government, you are financially very badly off if you are honest.
There was no way I was going to be dishonest, because those were not the values we
were brought up with.
Since I wanted independence, it had to be in a business. This was my dream, a distant
goal till I passed out of college and joined Lintas. By then I had decided that I would
work for 2-3 years and then start out on my own. So I worked at HMM, came back to
Delhi and within a year-and-a-half I quit. I started a company called Info Edge. That is
still the name of my company, Naukri is the brand. I started it with a partner and we
soon set up two companies, one was for salary surveys and one was a database of
trademarks on which we were doing searches. In October 1990, we were operating from
the servants' quarters above the garage at home and were paying my father Rs 800 as
monthly rent. What form of searches
were you doing? They were trade mark searches. We launched a salary survey in Info
Edge and with the money we made from that, my partner had another idea. He said the
trade mark registry in Bombay has a library where you can see pending trade mark
applications. The government takes five years to approve or reject a trade mark
application so if you thought of a brand name today, you apply for it, launch it in six
months and five years later if the government rejects your application you are dead,
especially if somebody else is already using it before you.
People used to hire a law firm which sent out people to do a manual check in the library
and assess whether the trade mark is likely to be accepted or rejected. This library is
opened to public inspection. So we sent in 20 college students to note down all
information filed under pharmaceuticals in all 134 classes.
We dumped this data in a computer and we wrote software to search it. We then began
to call pharma companies -- there were 5,000 of them -- saying if you are making a

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trade mark application talk to us. For Rs 350 we give you a printed search report. This
was a massive hit.
How did you deliver this?
We put the information in a computer. There were no online database searches then. So
we said, you tell us what you need, we do a search, prepare a report and send it to you
by courier. In 1993 my partner and I decided to go our separate ways.
I kept the salary survey company Info Edge and since the trademark thing was his idea
he kept that. I moved back to the servants' quarters and started afresh. Over the next
three years I kept costs low and made some money.
How did the survey work?
We used to do entry level salary surveys -- what companies are offering MBAs and
engineers at the entry level. We would do a report and send it to maybe a 100
companies. It was not customised. It was a standard survey sold at Rs 5,000 to maybe
100-200 companies. As the price went up we sold at may be Rs 10,000. We used to
speak to students who got offers usually from top ten engineering colleges. It worked
well.
Where did you get the idea?
When I was in HMM we didn't have offices with partitions like we do today. It was an
open hall where you could see, hear and speak to everyone. I noticed that when an
office copy of Business India came in, everybody used to read it from back to front. It
had 35 to 40 pages of appointment ads in every issue.
At that time Business India was the No.1 medium for appointment ads for managers.
And people would openly talk about jobs that were available or slipping out of their
hands. They discussed opportunities. Nobody was applying, nobody wanted to leave
because they were in a comfortable MNC job with good brands, good pay packages etc.,
but they used to talk about it.
From these conversations I figured that even if you are not looking for a job, you look at
a job. You are constantly looking for a new benchmark and checking if you are missing
out on anything.
Also, every week 2-3 head-hunters would call offering jobs. There must have been 100
headhunters out there and each of them probably had four to five clients. These jobs
were never advertised because we never saw them in Business India or elsewhere. I
figured, what is appearing in the newspapers is the tip of the iceberg. There is a massive
market below the surface, highly fragmented and scattered across HR Departments and
placement consultants.
If somebody could aggregate it, it would be a powerful product where you could
somehow make money. I knew this by 1990. When you are trying to become an
entrepreneur there are a thousand ideas -- this was one of them.
Where would your money come from, in a model like this?

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I had no clue. This was only an idea and I knew something would come out of it but I
didn't know how. It was just one of a thousand ideas -- file and forget kind of thing. By
then I had quit my job.
The Department of Telecom had put an ad on the front page of a newspaper saying it
was looking for private information providers to launch a video text service, like the one
in Paris. They would put up a server. . . I didn't even know what a server was those
days. . . and there would be terminals in 45 telephone exchanges and 50 other public
places from where information can be accessed for a fee.
They said, we want people who will own and maintain the databases and will not charge
us anything; but when the user pays we will do a revenue split. I spoke to my former
partner and said let's make a proposal where we get jobs from the company head hunters
free of cost and put them here and charge 50 bucks per search, so Rs 25 will be DoT's
and Rs 25 will be ours. He agreed we put in an application, were short-listed and they
called us. We found that around 30 to 40 people had turned up, some wanting to put up
tenders, others planning something else. So they said, fine, we have plenty of proposals
so now we can move to the next stage and get into details.
Naukri.com has traffic share of more than 70 per cent: CMO, Info Edge
Sumeet Singh says they have been extensively using AI and machine learning for the
past few years to improve user experience and will continue to do so
In the last two decades, the job search industry has seen a major shift from offline to
online. Naukri.com, the leading job search portal in the county, is continuously evolving
itself on the technology front to keep up with the demand.

In an interaction with exchange4media, Sumeet Singh, CMO, Info Edge, explained the
marketing strategy of Info Edge and how they are getting personal with the customers to
showcase the best result possible in real time.
“Today is the era of personalization, everyone is getting used to a personalized feed and
thus as a company, we have embarked on that journey too,” Singh says.
How has the online job search market evolved over the years since you started?
About two decades ago, most of the job vacancies were published in print. With the
emergence of the Internet and its penetration across the country, the market has
witnessed a shift in its trend. Now, a majority of the jobs in the organized sector and
white-collar jobs and more, are posted on portals. However, every three to four
years, new technology gets introduced and we as a company, have always been an early
adopter, and that has helped us remain ahead of the curve. We had set up an Analytics
division way back in 2007. This division has had data scientists working on improving
our matching algorithms for over a decade now.
For the past few years, mobile has been growing and the UI and UX for a small screen
are very different than that for a desktop. We now see a lot of engaged users using our
app, the notifications here are real-time, unlike a job alert which goes at fixed periods of
time. Today is the era of personalization. Everyone is getting used to a personalized
feed and thus, as a company, we have embarked on that journey too. We have been
extensively using AI and machine learning for the past few years to improve the user
experience and continue to do so.

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How are the other businesses doing (Jeevansathi, 99acres and Shiksha)? Among these
four, where does the major part of the overall revenue come from?
Naukri.com is our largest business amongst the four.
99acres is a leader and enjoys over 50 per cent traffic share consistently in the real
estate category. Despite demonetization and RERA, we have continued to invest in the
99acres business in Product, Technology and Marketing fields. Last year, the marketing
mix saw a lot of ATL and we were present on a few recent cricket series too. We will
continue to invest in all areas in 99acres.
he matrimonial market works a little differently. It is more community driven than
geography driven. Jeevansathi is a dominant player in the North and West region of the
country. Our marketing efforts are thus directed towards the North and the West. We
have seen suitable growth in profiles and revenue consistently over three years and it is
the fastest growing matrimonial portal in the country. The marketing mix has elements
of ATL, BTL and digital marketing which include SEM, social media and video.
How did the idea of “#Monday Blues” come about? Could you share some insights
from the campaign?
After a series of in-depth interviews and group discussions conducted with job seekers,
we discovered a couple of insights. The common factor revealed was that a lot of people
are not very happy in their current jobs but still continue to do them due to the
responsibilities they have. Thus, for quite a few, their job was a drag. There was no
single reason for this. While some said they didn’t like their organizations, others didn’t
like the role or the function they were in and some weren’t happy with the salary and
growth; but irrespective of this, quite a few said “We start feeling the stress of going to
work on Sunday evening itself.”
We then got a few more views and were quite sure as a team to back the theme. We
launched the ad earlier this year and have got a good response to the ad with over 16
million views on YouTube. The general buzz has been very encouraging and we also
saw healthy growth in metrics. While people have liked the insight enough,
additionally, the premium production quality has also been appreciated.
Tell us about your marketing mix.
The marketing mix of the new TVC launch was a 360-degree marketing. The mix
included TV advertising across 36 channels. The channels spanned Hindi, English and
regional languages. While the main genres were all a part of the plan, there was a focus
on both SD and HD channels across movies, news, business news, reality shows,
entertainment and English programming.
How are you leveraging the digital medium to reach out to customers?
Being an internet company, digital advertising is the backbone of the marketing mix.
Search Engine Optimization is a major traffic contributor and we have an in-house SEO
team. We dominate most searches on Google across our businesses in organic listings.
This is good quality traffic that converts well and is free.
We were the first to start SEM in the country back in 2004 when Google did not even
have an office in India. Our digital marketing is a mix of performance marketing, social
media, display, mobile and video. Performance marketing is the largest share of the pie
and is consistent almost through the year across all our businesses.

How do you deal with competition? Has it impacted the business traffic in any way?
Well, we are always watching our competition. In the recruitment sector, when other

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job portals were our competitors earlier; with time, different business models have
emerged and thus more players like aggregators and niche job sites have come into play.
Naukri has traffic share, which is upwards of 70 per centTOP COMPETITORS OR
ALTERNATIVES
Below Naukri.com competitors:
1.Monster
2. Timesjobs
3. JobSitesIndia
4. Shine
5. IIMJobs
6.LIKINDIN

MONSTER.COM
contracted Christopher Caldwell of Net Daemons Associates to develop a facility in an
NDA lab on a Sun Microsystems SPARCstation 5 where job seekers could search a job
database with a web browser. The machine was moved to sit under a router in a phone
closet in Adion (a human resources company owned by Taylor) when the site went live
in April 1994.
Initially, the site was populated with job descriptions from the newspaper segment of
Adion's business with the permissions of the companies advertising the jobs.
Later, in 1996, The Monster Board issued a press release that was picked up and
provided needed exposure to drive people to the web site. Monster was the first public
job search website on the Internet; first public resume database in the world and the first
to have job search agents or job alerts.
When TMP acquired Adion, the site was moved into BBN Planet's web hosting facility
where it grew from three SPARCserver 1000s to become the centerpiece of the globally
distributed network it is today.
TMP went public in December 1996, with its shares traded on NASDAQ under the
ticker symbol “TMPW”. In 1998, TMP acquisitions expanded the Recruitment
Advertising network. TMP became one of the largest recruitment advertising agencies
in the world.
In June 1998, The Monster Board moved its corporate headquarters out of a small office
above a Chinese restaurant in downtown Framingham, Massachusetts, to an old textile
mill in Maynard, Massachusetts, that formerly housed Digital Equipment Corporation.
In January 1999, The Monster Board became known as Monster.com after merging with
Online Career Center, another of TMP Worldwide's properties. The first post-merger
president of the new Monster.com business was Bill Warren, the founder of Online
Career Center.

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In November 2000, seeking to attract additional job market levels, Monster bought
JOBTRAK because it was used at thousands of heterogeneous college and university
campuses. The 1987 peaceful conception of JOBTRAK by Jeff Wohlwend who then
brought in Dave Franey and the Ramberg family giving birth to what is now the
MonsterTRAK feature "for male and female students and alumni seeking jobs and
career advice."
Recognizing that job hunting often leads to relocation, Monster launched
Monstermoving.com in 2000 to provide consumers with the comprehensive resources
necessary for a successful move.
TMP Worldwide was added to S&P 500 Index in 2002. TMP Worldwide changed its
corporate name to Monster Worldwide, Inc. and began trading under the new NASDAQ
ticker symbol "MWW" in 2003.
Monster.com advertised on the Super Bowl starting in 1999 and every year through
Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004. Monster's first-ever Super Bowl ad, "When I Grow Up",
(created by Mullen) asking job seekers, "What did you want to be?" It is the only
commercial named to Time magazine's list of the "Best of Television 1999." As the
official online career management services sponsor of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games
and 2002 U.S. Olympic Team, Monster had a strong presence at the 2002 Olympic
Winter Games in Salt Lake City.
On December 27, 2001, Yahoo! acquired HotJobs.com.
In April 2002, Monster purchased the Jobs.com URL and trademark for $800,000.
Founder and Chairman Jeff Taylor was quoted as saying "Jobs.com is a desirable URL".
In August 2005, founder Jeff Taylor left Monster to create Eons.com.
In April 2007, Monster named Sal Iannuzzi as chairman and CEO.
In May 2007, Monster launched its first (NA and EU) Mobile services offering Mobile
job search and career advice.[8]
In January 2008, Monster acquired Affinity Labs for US$61 million.
In July 2008,[10] Monster acquired Trovix, a semantic job search engine, for US$72.5
million. Monster has indicated that it plans to replace their job search and candidate
matching with Trovix's technology.

LINKDIN
The company was founded in December 2002 by Reid Hoffman and founding team
members from PayPal and Socialnet.com (Allen Blue, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Lee
Hower, Konstantin Guericke, Stephen Beitzel, David Eves, Ian McNish, Yan Pujante,
Chris Saccheri). In late 2003, Sequoia Capital led the Series A investment in the
company. In August 2004, LinkedIn reached 1 million users. In March 2006, LinkedIn

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achieved its first month of profitability. In April 2007, LinkedIn reached 10 million
users.[22] In February 2008, LinkedIn launched a mobile version of the site.
In June 2008, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, and other venture capital firms
purchased a 5% stake in the company for $53 million, giving the company a post-
money valuation of approximately $1 billion. In November 2009, LinkedIn opened its
office in Mumbai[25] and soon thereafter in Sydney, as it started its Asia-Pacific team
expansion. In 2010, LinkedIn opened an International Headquarters in Dublin, Ireland,
[26]
received a $20 million investment from Tiger Global Management LLC at a
valuation of approximately $2 billion, announced its first acquisition, Mspoke, and
improved its 1% premium subscription ratio. In October of that year, Silicon Valley
Insider ranked the company No. 10 on its Top 100 List of most valuable start ups. By
December, the company was valued at $1.575 billion in private markets.

MYREFER
MyRefers is one of Naukri's top competitors. MyRefers was founded in 2013, and its
headquarters is in New Delhi, Delhi. MyRefers competes in the Management
Consulting Services field. MyRefers has 2,357 fewer employees than Naukri.

TIMESJOBS
TimesJobs is Naukri's #2 rival. TimesJobs was founded in 2004 in Noida, Uttar
Pradesh. TimesJobs competes in the Management Consulting Services industry.
TimesJobs generates $12.3M less revenue than Naukri.

IIM JOBS

iimjobs.com started off back in 2008 and since then it’s now grown into the largest job
board for mid to senior management jobs in India, featuring some of the best jobs in
Banking & Finance, Consulting, Research & Analytics, Sales & Marketing, HR, IT and
Operations.

Although the name might suggest that it’s a platform purely for IIM graduates but over
a period of time, we’ve grown beyond this name and now we see a large number of mid
level and senior level candidates registering and applying through the site.

iimjobs.com is an online platform that connects candidates with recruiters. Recruiters

post their jobs for free on the site and candidates apply to those jobs.

SPRINGROLE

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SpringRole is a top competitor of Naukri. SpringRole is a Private company that was
founded in Santa Monica, California in 2011. SpringRole operates in the Business
Support Services industry. SpringRole has 2,380 fewer employees vs. Naukri.
Users of SpringRole can import their resumes and create customizeable profiles. The
profile can contain featured information that appear on various platforms, such as
GitHub, Dribble, Twitter, etc.3The resume is verified as legitimate by the employers
listed on the resume so that it can then be posted on the platform. Users then get skill
endorsements from the employers listed on the resume.4Former employers can vet for
the user that he/she does indeed have those skills.
There is a messaging feature on the platform which allows potential employers to reach
out to talent to express interest in working with them. The users are paid with the
company's cryptocurrency, SPRING tokens, for each message that they receive. 5Job-
seekers can use a note taking feature that enables them to take notes about people who
have contacted them. Users can also showcase their freelance projects to create a
portfolio for potential employers to view.

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Detail of major competitor (LINKDIN)

LinkedIn is the world’s preeminent social network for professionals. Members create
online résumés, listing their current and previous job roles, their skills, and their
education. They can network with other LinkedIn members, who are searchable by the
above criteria and more. LinkedIn users can be endorsed by other users, for individual
skills or through a more general written reference. Members can join professional
groups relevant to their interests.
As well as individual professionals, LinkedIn allows businesses to create profiles, and
list current vacancies. Members can apply for these positions directly through
LinkedIn’s interface. LinkedIn also provides a publishing platform, designed to
facilitate thought leadership in the business world.
LinkedIn was initially conceived in cofounder Reid Hoffman’s living room in 2002.
Hoffman had previously worked for Apple, creating eWorld – an early attempt at a
social network, later snapped up by AOL. He would have another go at establishing a
social network in 1997, with SocialNet.com – which aimed to connect people with
similar interests (sound familiar?).

Peter Thiel later reflected that SocialNet’s failure was down to its being “years ahead of
its time”. Thiel had been a Stanford classmate of Hoffman’s: later, he would be a
colleague, with the two serving together on the board of the then nascent PayPal
(alongside a certain Elon Musk).
Hoffman’s next attempt at creating a social network, alongside colleagues from
SocialNet.com and PayPal would be far more successful. LinkedIn officially launched
on May 5th 2003. Take up was slow, with daily sign ups as low as 20 people for a
period. Sequoia Capital, however, saw enough potential in the idea to invest $4.7
million in the young company. You can read our compilation of LinkedIn stats and facts
over its history from these humble beginnings up to the present day below – looking at
how many people use the site, who they are, and what they’re worth in terms of
revenue.

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Of course, LinkedIn wasn’t humble for long. Sequoia Capital has something of a magic
touch when it comes to investing in young businesses. At last count, it has 17 ‘unicorns’
on its books, including AirBnB and Square (a company which Hoffman has expressed
regret for not investing in). Their faith was duly rewarded

In 2005, LinkedIn opened up its first revenue making operations: job listings and
subscriptions (known as Premium membership – unlocking additional features). By
2006 it was turning a profit, and by 2011 it became a publicly listed company on the
New York Stock Exchange, under current CEO Jeff Weiner.
In June 2016, Microsoft announced it would be buying LinkedIn in an all-cash
transaction for $26.2 billion – $196 per share. The purchase was completed in
December of the same year, and stands as Microsoft’s biggest acquisition to date.
According to Amazon Alexa, LinkedIn was the 21st biggest website in the world, and
10th in the US in late 2018. By late 2019, it had fallen to 57th in terms of global
engagement  (though SimilarWeb says 24th), and 21st in the US. It had been as high as
35 in August.
LinkedIn User Statistics
LinkedIn reports over 660 million users spread over 200 countries, as of late November
2019. Between them, they represent 30 million companies.
More than two new members join LinkedIn every second. CEO Jeff Weiner has big
ambitions for LinkedIn’s reach – stating that his goal was to get 3 billion people to sign
up.
LinkedIn, of course, is not just designed for the individual user. Company pages are also
a part of the melange: around 30 million of them at last count.
The active user base of LinkedIn is debated. Using SimilarWeb data, We Are Social and
Hootsuite in October 2019 estimate LinkedIn MAUs at 310 million (47% of members).
This is relatively consistent with Boston-based Apptopia’s 2017 estimate of an active
LinkedIn user base of around 250 million in 2017, representing 50% of its 500 million
members at the time.

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This is actually relatively generous – other estimates are as low as only 25% of the total
LinkedIn membership (2018). If we take the 310 million figure as our benchmark,
LinkedIn is the 15th biggest social network in the world in terms of MAU.
Other sources claim that 40% of LinkedIn users use the site daily – though we were
unable to find the initial source of this stat.
The chart below maps LinkedIn user growth from 2009 to 2019.
We can see that over this 10 year period growth in the LinkedIn membership base has
been nothing less than consistent, with quarterly increases tending to remain in the 15-
20 million zone pretty much every time. No falling in or out of fashion here – most
likely just new cohorts of would-be employees signing up every year.
Data in the year or so after the Microsoft acquisition of 2016 is a bit patchy, but we can
see the growth has been along a relatively smooth line, with no great blips or jumps of
any note.
LinkedIn user growth, 2009 – 2019, millions

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Data source: Statista/various
We Are Social and Hootsuite estimate that 12% adults can be reached using LinkedIn
advertising. 
LinkedIn demographics
If you’re looking to rub shoulders with the cream of the business world, LinkedIn is the
place to do it – online at least. Executives from every Fortune 500 company use the
social network, LinkedIn claims. There are even claims that four out of 10 millionaires
use LinkedIn.
According to LinkedIn’s B2B blog, 90 million LinkedIn users are senior-level
influencers (with four out of five decision makers of all stripes on the platform), and 63
million are in decision-making positions. We also see 17 million opinion leaders, and 10
million c-level executives, among others (these stats are from the first half of 2019, so
these figures have most likely risen).
We might note those 40 million ‘mass affluent’ users also (that’s the higher end of the
mass market). LinkedIn notes that it users have double the buying power of the average
web audience.
LinkedIn members in senior positions

All levels of professional are included, however: there were 46 million students and
recent graduates among the LinkedIn user base, as of September 2018.

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Going back a few years, LinkedIn reported 87 million Millennials on LinkedIn, 11
million of whom were in decision-making positions. No doubt both have increased
since these figures were published in 2016.  Indeed, LinkedIn’s official addressable
advertising audience stats (see age/gender stats below) show that 25-34 year old are by
far the biggest demographic by this measure.
An undated stat from LinkedIn claims 12 million contractors use the platform.
If you’re interested in learning a little about certain demographics, LinkedIn Marketing
Solutions minisite features stats on certain demographics (though they seem  little
outdated, listing 5 million c-level execs, against the 10 million listed above). Here you
can find out tidbits such as: Mashable is the second-most followed company by those in
the c-suite, or the top influencer for IT decision maker is Michael Dell, or that the top
skill possessed by small business owners is business strategy.
165 million LinkedIn users are based in the US. With 62 million LinkedIn users, India
is the second-biggest market, followed by China at 48 million.
The UK is the biggest market in Europe, with 27 million users, while Brazil’s 40
million LinkedIn users puts it comfortable in the lead in Latin America. South Africa is
the most sizeable LinkedIn market in Africa, with 7 million, and Australia in Oceania,
with 10 million.
LinkedIn users around the world

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Source: LinkedIn                 
According to Alexa, 38.6% of LinkedIn’s traffic comes in from the US (as of late
November 2019). India is second, providing 16.8%
If we just look at desktop traffic, just over a quarter comes from the US, way ahead of
second-place India on a little over 7% and the UK in third place at just under 6%. Brazil
and France complete the top-five.

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SWOT ANALYSIS OF LINKDIN
Strengths
LinkedIn’s breakout success can be largely attributed to its unique product: organizing
what used to be an informal and intangible process into a user-friendly professional
networking platform. Where LinkedIn’s competitors—Monster, CareerBuilder, and
Dice—can only offer recruiters the option to post jobs to universally accessible lists,
LinkedIn’s advanced analytics system allows recruiters to customize what kind of
applicant a post reaches. Recruiters on LinkedIn can see any shared connections and
directly contact prospective applicants, humanizing an experience that can feel distant
and impersonal and increasing their probability of success. Moreover, because of the
nature of social media, where it is in consumers’ best interests for one site to dominate,
LinkedIn’s unique product—and therefore its first-mover advantage—has secured its
spot in this market, at least for the short-run. Should LinkedIn’s grip on this market
begin to slip, its analytics platform has proven itself versatile across industries. Though
this could also be perceived as a weakness, as discussed in the next section, it provides
the company a certain level of security: minimally, they have
Strengths Weaknesses
• Unique Product
• Versatile Analytics
Platform
• Proven Success
• Slowing Metrics
• Overly Diversified Product
Line
• International Expansion:
Infrastructure
Opportunities Threats
• Targeted International
Expansion
• Become Domestic Market
Leader
• International Expansion:
Regulation and Public
Perception
• Vulnerability of the Social
Media Industry
23
amassed a detailed and massive database containing 280 million members’ employment
history, and have the analytic capabilities to effectively sort and interpret this
information. Finally, LinkedIn’s performance thus far has established that there is a
strong demand both domestically and internationally. Its financials, as discussed, are
consistently sound in both markets, and compare well to direct competitors. Likewise,
though investor enthusiasm has fallen slightly in the recent quarter, the stock is still
priced 870 times current earnings, which implies the market has faith that demand for
LinkedIn will continue to grow.
Weaknesses
User engagement drives LinkedIn’s profitability, and though engagement is still
increasing, growth rates are decreasing across all indicators. Unique visitor growth, or
the increase in users who have visited the website at least once in a one-month period, is
falling from a 62% increase in 2011, to a 50% increase in 2012, to a 45% increase in

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2013. Likewise, page views increased only 24% in 2013 compared to 30% in 2012 and
63% in 2011 and the number of registered members increased only 37% in 2013
compared to 39% in 2012 and 60% in 2011. If LinkedIn
cannot continue to attract new users and increase site traffic, they can expect to lose
significant revenue from marketing and recruiting clients.
Partly in response to these declining metrics, LinkedIn has made an effort to look for
alternative revenue sources and expand its product line. However, it has looked too far
outside its core competency to do so. LinkedIn’s latest effort to diversify was its
introduction of Sales Solutions, or a “social selling solution” that allows sales
representatives to find and create new opportunities using advanced LinkedIn search
capabilities. This venture has created new vulnerabilities for the company, not the least
of which is that, when it comes down to it, this is a
social media and recruiting company hybrid trying to expand into a third and entirely
unrelated industry. Not only do they have no industry knowledge, but even if the
product doesn’t fail of its own volition, LinkedIn must also compete with well-
established competitors whose entire companies focus solely on monetizing sales
networks, such as Salesforce.com.
24 More importantly, by expanding into another industry LinkedIn could be
endangering its brand. The upside is small, while the downside is substantial: Sales
Solutions revenue is negligible,
comprising only a fraction of LinkedIn Premium Subscription revenues—its lowest
earning product line—but it could jeopardize user loyalty. As previously discussed, user
loyalty is everything for LinkedIn, who must wrestle with the whims of a fad industry.
LinkedIn monopolizes the professional networking arena because of its first mover
advantage with this unique product. If its brand loses power (e.g. it is no longer seen as
a professional networking
site), users may look to switch to a more clearly defined platform. Or, worse, users may
feel alienated by a company that sells special profile access to sales representatives,
effectively destroying all trust LinkedIn has accrued with customers. Limiting the
downside of this sales program, it seems, lies in the consumers being ignorant of its
existence; yet, ignorance also means the company cannot effectively market the service,
limiting its upside. LinkedIn is also actively pursing an aggressive international
expansion model to increase the number of users. However, LinkedIn’s existing
infrastructure may not be able to handle a
dramatic influx of new members, which could severely weaken its performance. One
manifestation of this would be slower load times, while another would be that the site
would not adequately localize postings. In either case, users may lose faith in the brand,
ultimately becoming frustrated and leaving the site.
Opportunities
Though LinkedIn’s international expansion poses some challenges, it should also be
seen as an opportunity. If LinkedIn creates a more directed plan, targeting countries
based on specific historically profitable parameters—such as high tech areas, business
centers, or high-population cities—expansion could be largely driven by organic growth
without the threats associated with entering too many countries at once. A well-defined
strategy can help focus the movement in a way that does not overextend resources,
while still providing the user growth LinkedIn needs. Domestically, LinkedIn should
capitalize on its growing popularity and waning competitors to become the market
leader for recruiting services. It is on its way, already gaining traction and a
25 growing percentage of the market share—nearly quadrupling to $23 billion from its
$6.5 billion market cap in January 2012—but there are more opportunities for the
company to cement its position. The corporation needs to focus its development on

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establishing products that further its brand and expand its active user base, eliminating
all projects that don’t accomplish either of these goals. Essentially, LinkedIn should rely
on its proven strength: revolutionizing the way professionals work by digitizing and
consolidating different parts of their lives. The company should continue to develop, not
by diversifying out of professional networking, but by reaching into other areas of
professionals’ lives (implementing a business card application, for example).
In this vein, an opportunity exists for LinkedIn to more directly challenge Monster’s
entire platform and institute a version of “Monster College,” or a recruiting site targeted
towards undergraduate students to help them find internships and entry-level
employment. An internship site could help LinkedIn solidify its domestic dominance,
while also increasing its new member and unique visit rates.
Threats
LinkedIn’s emphasis on international expansion will open the company up to a number
of disparate regulatory problems, which become increasingly hazardous to overall
company health as international traffic grows as a percentage of total revenues: 32%,
36%, and 38% in 2011, 2012, and 2013, respectively. Each country will have diverse
sets of regulations regarding illicit user activity, how to store user information, and
company responsibility in the aftermath of an information breach from hacking activity,
notwithstanding entirely different tax policies. As LinkedIn expands into China, for
example, they must face additional costs ensuring the site is not used for any political
messaging. The United States, on the other hand, has relatively no regulatory
prescriptions in place; yet, the lack of regulation is just as threatening, as Congress
can always pass new bills rendering LinkedIn liable on any of the aforementioned
topics. For each new country LinkedIn enters, they must be aware of how these
additional compliance obligations may impact their bottom line.
26 It’s also important to note that some of these regulatory changes may not originate in
the government, but instead may come from the public. Recently, social media privacy
has been a trending news topic. If the public—be it American or international—chooses
to mobilize and press the issue, demanding that companies be more judicious in how
user information is distributed or that they do more to protect user information,
LinkedIn could be faced with huge personnel cost increases. If LinkedIn and other
social media companies do not comply with evolving privacy expectations, users are
likely to abandon the sites entirely, effectively ending the industry.

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 MAKETING ANALYSIS

Key LinkedIn Statistics
 660 million LinkedIn users, spread over 200 countries, November 2019
 US is the biggest market (165 million users), followed by India (62 million), and
China (48 million)
 Over 30 million companies have profiles on LinkedIn
 In 2019, 90 million LinkedIn users were senior-level influencers, and 63 million
were in decision-making positions
 46 million student and 87 million Millennial LinkedIn users (11 million of
whom are decision makers) in 2016
 38.6% of LinkedIn traffic from US, and 16.8% from India
 57% of LinkedIn members are male, 43% female
 27% of US adults are signed up to LinkedIn
 LinkedIn users spend an average of 10:20 minutes on the site daily, visiting 8.5
pages, or an average of 7:18 minutes, visiting 7.99 pages, depending on who you ask…
 Median number of connections between 500 and 999
 122 million users have been invited to an interview through LinkedIn, with 35.5
million getting a job through someone with whom they are connected
 20 million jobs listed on LinkedIn
 3 million US jobs posted every month
 57% of LinkedIn traffic comes from mobile devices
 9 billion content impressions take place on LinkedIn weekly
 280 billion feed updates viewed annually
 Only 1% of users post content weekly, though 91% of marketing executives use
LinkedIn as a content source
 130,000 articles are published on LinkedIn weekly
 80% of B2B leads come through LinkedIn
 LinkedIn purchased by Microsoft in 2016, deal finalised in December 2016 for
$26.2 billion
 In the 2019 fiscal year, LinkedIn brought in $6.8 billion worth of revenue,
contributing to $38.1 billion of commercial cloud revenue for Microsoft, which in turn
made up part of $126 billion total revenue.

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Founding to 2010
The company was founded in December 2002 by Reid Hoffman and founding team
members from PayPal and Socialnet.com (Allen Blue, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Lee
Hower, Konstantin Guericke, Stephen Beitzel, David Eves, Ian McNish, Yan Pujante,
Chris Saccheri). In late 2003, Sequoia Capital led the Series A investment in the
company In August 2004, LinkedIn reached 1 million users. In March 2006, LinkedIn
achieved its first month of profitability. In April 2007, LinkedIn reached 10 million
users. In February 2008, LinkedIn launched a mobile version of the site.
In June 2008, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, and other venture capital firms
purchased a 5% stake in the company for $53 million, giving the company a post-
money valuation of approximately $1 billion. In November 2009, LinkedIn opened its
office in Mumbai] and soon thereafter in Sydney, as it started its Asia-Pacific team
expansion. In 2010, LinkedIn opened an International Headquarters in Dublin, Ireland,
received a $20 million investment from Tiger Global Management LLC at a valuation
of approximately $2 billion, announced its first acquisition, Mspoke, and improved its
1% premium subscription ratio.In October of that year, Silicon Valley Insider ranked
the company No. 10 on its Top 100 List of most valuable startups. By December, the
company was valued at $1.575 billion in private markets.
LinkedIn office in Toronto
LinkedIn filed for an initial public offering in January 2011. The company traded its
first shares on May 19, 2011, under the NYSE symbol "LNKD", at $45 per share.
Shares of LinkedIn rose as much as 171% on their first day of trade on the New York
Stock Exchange and closed at $94.25, more than 109% above IPO price. Shortly after
the IPO, the site's underlying infrastructure was revised to allow accelerated revision-
release cycles. In 2011, LinkedIn earned $154.6 million in advertising revenue alone,
surpassing Twitter, which earned $139.5 million. LinkedIn's fourth-quarter 2011
earnings soared because of the company's increase in success in the social media world.
By this point, LinkedIn had about 2,100 full-time employees compared to the 500 that it
had in 2010.
In April 2014, LinkedIn announced that it had leased 222 Second Street, a 26-story
building under construction in San Francisco's SoMa district, to accommodate up to
2,500 of its employees, with the lease covering 10 years.[9] The goal was to join all San
Francisco-based staff (1,250 as of January 2016) in one building, bringing sales and
marketing employees together with the research and development team. They started to
move in in March 2016. In February 2016, following an earnings report, LinkedIn's
shares dropped 43.6% within a single day, down to $108.38 per share. LinkedIn lost
$10 billion of its market capitalization that day.
On June 13, 2016, Microsoft announced that it would acquire LinkedIn for $196 a
share, a total value of $26.2 billion and the largest acquisition made by Microsoft to
date. The acquisition would be an all-cash, debt-financed transaction. Microsoft would
allow LinkedIn to "retain its distinct brand, culture and independence", with Weiner to
remain as CEO, who would then report to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Analysts
believed Microsoft saw the opportunity to integrate LinkedIn with its Office product
suite to help better integrate the professional network system with its products. The deal
was completed on December 8, 2016.

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In late 2016, LinkedIn announced a planned increase of 200 new positions in its Dublin
office, which would bring the total employee count to 1,200.
As of 2017, 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content.
In 2019, LinkedIn launched globally the feature Open for Business that enables
freelancers to be discovered on the platform. LinkedIn Events was launched in the same
year.

Personal branding
When a user accepts an invitation from another user, they have a first-level connection;
the user is indirectly connected to the other user's connections with what LinkedIn terms
second-level and third-level connections.

LinkedIn is particularly well-suited for personal branding which, according to Sandra

Long, entails "actively managing one's image and unique value" to position oneself for
career opportunities. LinkedIn has evolved from being a mere platform for job searchers
into a social network which allows users a chance to create a personal brand. Career
coach Pamela Green describes a personal brand as the "emotional experience you want
people to have as a result of interacting with you," and a LinkedIn profile is an aspect of
that. A contrasting report suggests that a personal brand is a "a public-facing persona,
exhibited on LinkedIn, Twitter and other networks, that showcases expertise and fosters
new connections.

LinkedIn allows professionals to build exposure for their personal brand within the site
itself as well as in the World Wide Web as a whole. With a tool that LinkedIn dubs a
Profile Strength Meter, the site encourages users to offer enough information in their
profile to optimize visibility by search engines. A basic profile should include a person's
industry and location, an up-to-date job description, two past positions, education, at
least three skills, a profile picture, and at least fifty connections. Web activity such as
liking and commenting on content, as well as publishing LinkedIn blog articles and
being involved in LinkedIn groups can increase views of one's profile, according to
Long. Advisor Kristin Sherry agrees, who recommended that users should engage with
commenters and "give give give". Profiles should be written in first person and have
well-chosen keywords and list relevant skills, according to Long. In 2016, user profiles
with five or more relevant skills were viewed seventeen times more often than those
with fewer skills. These skills could be enhanced with recommendations and
endorsements to solidify one's social proof. A profile should have internal consistency,
so that the headline and image and skills mesh into an easy-to-grasp picture. Long
recommends that users update their profiles regularly; a survey by Post Road
Consulting found that over two-thirds of respondents spent two or more hours updating
their profile every year LinkedIn's Shiva Kumar advised users to have a good profile
picture and showcase one's achievements "without buzzwords" It can strengthen a user's
LinkedIn presence if he or she belongs to professional groups in the site The site
enables users to add video to their profiles.Some users hire a professional photographer
for one's profile photo. Video presentations can be added to one's profile LinkedIn's
capabilities have been expanding so rapidly that a cottage industry of outside
consultants has grown up to help users navigate the system. A particular emphasis is
helping users with their LinkedIn profiles.

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There’s no hiding in the long grass on LinkedIn ... The number one mistake people
make on the profile is to not have a photo.

The value of connection

LinkedIn enables job-seekers and employers to connect. According to Jack Meyer, the
site has become the "premier digital platform" for professionals to network online For
example, in Australia, which has approximately twelve million working professionals,
ten million of them are on LinkedIn, according to Anastasia Santaraneos, suggesting
that the probability was high that one's "future employer is probably on the
site.According to one estimate based on worldwide figures, 122 million users got job
interviews via LinkedIn and 35 million were hired by a LinkedIn online connection.Not
only helping job applicants meet employers, LinkedIn can help small businesses
connect with customers Connections are important in boosting a user's standing and
presence in LinkedIn. In the site's parlance, two users have a "first-degree connection"
when one accepts an invitation from another People connected to each of them are
"second-degree connections" and persons connected to the second-degree connections
are "third-degree connections." This forms a user's internal LinkedIn network. As these
connections get stronger and deeper, the user's profile is more likely to appear in
searches by employers and others.

The premise for connecting with someone has shifted significantly in recent years. Prior
to the 2017 new interface being launched, whenever people tried to connect with
someone they were prompted to select how they knew that person. In other words,
LinkedIn encouraged connections between people who'd already worked together,
studied together, done business together or the like. Since 2017 that step has been
removed from the connection request process - and users are allowed to connectwith up
to 30,000 people. This change means LinkedIn is now far more of a proactive
networking site, be that for job applicants trying to secure a career move or for
salespeople wanting to generate new client leads.

For job applicants, cold call messaging on LinkedIn generally is ineffective So

messages should have a personal touch, such as the person read their book or heard
them speak at a conference or have a common contact, according to Maddy Osman.The
message header should be short and specific. Similarly, salespeople enjoy greater
success when they use a personal touch in their messages and try to simply get a
conversation started rather than immediately trying to get a meeting.

Security and technology

In June 2012, cryptographic hashes of approximately 6.4 million LinkedIn user

passwords were stolen by hackers who then pblished the stolen hashes online This
action is known as the 2012 LinkedIn hack. In response to the incident, LinkedIn asked
its users to change their passwords. Security experts criticized LinkedIn for not salting
their password file and for using a single iteration of SHA-1.On May 31, 2013 LinkedIn
added two-factor authentication, an important security enhancement for preventing
hackers from gaining access to accounts. In May 2016, 117 million LinkedIn usernames
and passwords were offered for sale online for the equivalent of $2,200.These account
details are believed to be sourced from the original 2012 LinkedIn hack, in which the
number of user IDs stolen had been underestimated. To handle the large volume of

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emails sent to its users every day with notifications for messages, profile views,
important happenings in their network, and other things, LinkedIn uses the Momentum
email platform from Message Systems

In 2014, Dell SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) discovered that Threat Group-
2889, an Iran-based group, created 25 fake LinkedIn accounts. The accounts were either
fully developed personas or supporting personas, and they use spearphishing or
malicious websites to comprise victims' information.

According to reporting by Le Figaro, France's General Directorate for Internal Security

and Directorate-General for External Security believe that Chinese spies have used
LinkedIn to target thousands of business and government officials as potential sources
of information.

In 2017, Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV)
published information alleging that Chinese intelligence services had created fake social
media profiles on sites such as LinkedIn, using them to gather information on German
politicians and government officials

Applications

LinkedIn 'applications' often refers to external third party applications that interact with
LinkedIn's developer API. However, in some cases it could refer to sanctioned
applications featured on a user's profile page.

External, third party applications

On February 12, 2015 LinkedIn released an updated terms of use for their developer
API.[102] The developer API allows both companies and individuals the ability to interact
with LinkedIn's data through creation of managed third party applications. Applications
must go through a review process and request permission from the user before accessing
a user's data.

Normal use of the API is outlined in LinkedIn's developer documents including:

 Sign into external services using LinkedIn

 Add items or attributes to a user profile
 Share items or articles to user's timeline

Embedded in profile

In October 2008, LinkedIn enabled an "applications platform" which allows external

online services to be embeddd within a member's profile page. Among the initial
applications were an Amazon Reading List that allows LinkedIn members to display
books they are reading, a connection to Tripit, and a Six Apart, WordPress and TypePad
application that allows members to display their latest blog postings within their
LinkedIn profile In November 2010, LinkedIn allowed businesses to list products and
services on company profile pages; it also permitted LinkedIn members to
"recommend" products and services and write reviewsShortly after, some of the external
services were no longer supported, including Amazon's Reading List.

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Mobile

A mobile version of the site was launched in February 2008, which gives access to a
reduced feature set over a mobile phone. The mobile service is available in six
languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish In January 2011,
LinkedIn acquired CardMunch, a mobile app maker that scans business cards and
converts into contacts. In June 2013, CardMunch was noted as an available LinkedIn
app. In August 2011, LinkedIn revamped its mobile applications on the iPhone, Android
and HTML5. At the time, mobile page views of the application were increasing roughly
400% year over year according to CEO Jeff Weiner In October 2013, LinkedIn
announced a service for iPhone users called "Intro", which inserts a thumbnail of a
person's LinkedIn profile in correspondence with that person when reading mail
messages in the native iOS Mail program This is accomplished by re-routing all emails
from and to the iPhone through LinkedIn servers, which security firm Bishop Fox
asserts has serious privacy implications, violates many organizations' security policies,
and resembles a man-in-the-middle attack.

Groups

Linked In also supports the formation of interest groups, and as of March 29, 2012 there
are 1,248,019 such groups whose membership varies from 1 to 744,662. The maority of
the largest groups are employment related, although a very wide range of topics are
covered mainly around professional and career issues, and there are currently 128,000
groups for both academic and corporate alumni Groups support a limited form of
discussion area, moderated by the group owners and managers Since groups offer the
functionality to reach a wide audience without so easily falling foul of anti-spam
solutions, there is a constant stream of spam postings, and there now exists a range of
firms who offer a spamming service for this very purpose. LinkedIn has devised a few
mechanisms to reduce the volume of spam but recently took the decision to remove the
ability of group owners to inspect the email address of new members in order to
determine if they were spammers.] Groups also keep their members informed through
emails with updates to the group, including most talked about discussions within your
professional circles. Groups may be private, accessible to members only or may be open
to Internet users in general to read, though they must join in order to post messages.

In December 2011, LinkedIn announced that they are rolling out polls to groups. In
November 2013, LinkedIn announced the addition of Showcase Pages to the platform.
In 2014, LinkedIn announced they were going to be removing Product and Services
Pages paving the way for a greater focus on Showcase Pages.

Job listings

LinkedIn allows users to research companies, non-profit organizations, and

governments they may be interested in working for. Typing the name of a company or
organization in the search box causes pop-up data about the company or organization to
appear. Such data may include the ratio of female to male employees, the percentage of
the most common titles/positions held within the company, the location of the
company's headquarters and offices, and a list of present and former employees. In July
2011, LinkedIn launched a new feature allowing companies to include an "Apply with
LinkedIn" button on job listing pages. The new plugin allowed potential employees to
apply for positions using their LinkedIn profiles as resumes

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Online recruiting

Job recruiters, head hunters, and personnel HR are increasingly using LinkedIn as a
source for finding potential candidates. By using the Advanced search tools, recruiters
can find members matching their specific key words with a click of a button. They then
can make contact with those members by sending a request to connect or by sending
InMail about a specific job opportunity he or she may have. Recruiters also often join
industry-based groups on LinkedIn to create connections with professionals in that line
of business

Skill

Since September 2012, LinkedIn has enabled users to "endorse" each other's skills. This
feature also allows users to efficiently provide commentary on other users' profiles –
network building is reinforced. However, there is no way of flagging anything other
than positive content LinkedIn solicits endorsements using algorithms that generate
skills members might have. Members cannot opt out of such solicitations, with the
result that it sometimes appears that a member is soliciting an endorsement for a non-
existent skill.

Publishing platform

LinkedIn continues to add different services to its platform to expand the ways that
people use it. On May 7, 2015, LinkedIn added an analytics tool to its publishing
platform. The tool allows authors to better track traffic that their posts receive.

Influencers

The LinkedIn Influencers program launched in October 2012 and features global
thought leaders who share their professional insights with LinkedIn's members. As of
May 2016, there are 750+ Influencers, approximately 74% of which are male. The
program is invite-only and features leaders from a range of industries including Richard
Branson, Narendra Modi, Arianna Huffington, Greg McKeown, Rahm Emanuel, Jamie
Dimon, Martha Stewart, Deepak Chopra, Jack Welch, and Bill Gates

Profinder

LinkedIn offers a comparatively modern approach to using the professionals in their

network to provide skilful resources and assistance required by their members. Resume
writing is one of the key features of this range of services. This includes a curated
network of "Pro"s to offer you their quotes, and you may avail their services directly.

Profinder offers easy and professional services in IT, Design, Writing and Editing,
Marketing, Business Consultations, Legal, etc.

How does Profinder work?

1. Request: Answer a few simple questions about your service needs

2. Receive: You'll get offers from curated list of professionals
3. Hire: When you're ready, hire the right expert with confidence

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Top Companies

LinkedIn Top Companies is a series of lists published by LinkedIn, identifying

companies in the United States, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany,
India, Japan, Mexico and the United Kingdom that are attracting the most intense
interest from job candidates. The 2019 lists identified Google's parent company,
Alphabet, as the most sought-after U.S. company, with Facebook ranked second and
Amazon ranked third. The lists are based on more than one billion actions by LinkedIn
members worldwide. The Top Companies lists were started in 2016 and are published
annually.

Advertising and for-pay research

In mid-2008, LinkedIn launched LinkedIn DirectAds as a form of sponsored advertising

In October 2008, LinkedIn revealed plans to open its social network of 30 million
professionals globally as a potential sample for business-to-business research. It is
testing a potential social network revenue model – research that to some appears more
promising than advertising On July 23, 2013, LinkedIn announced their Sponsored
Updates ad service. Individuals and companies can now pay a fee to have LinkedIn
sponsor their content and spread it to their user base. This is a common way for social
media sites such as LinkedIn to generate revenue.

FINANCIAL ANALYSIS
Overview

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LinkedIn raised $352.8 million when it went public in 2011, issuing 7.84 million shares
for $45 each. The stock more than doubled the first day of trading, closing at $98 per
share. After a tumultuous first year, LinkedIn’s stock has followed a mostly upward
trend to its current price of $190.59, generally outperforming the S&P 500 and industry
peers. Overall, the financial health and growth opportunities of LinkedIn are above
average compared to other recruiting companies, such as Monster.com and Dice
Holdings. LinkedIn’s unique fusion of social media and recruitment services means it
holds a market niche that might cushion it from the risk of pure play recruitment
providers. However, despite recording universally positive fourth quarter figures,
including a 47% increase in revenue from Q4 of the prior year, LinkedIn user growth
has failed to meet market expectations, suggesting the company may struggle to match
future revenue goals.
LinkedIn Monster Dice
Market Cap 22.65B 670.6M 407.37M
Net Income 26.77M 3.32M 16.25M
P/E 871.83 608.55 26.33
Current Ratio 4.29 0.97 0.74
D/E 0.00 17.13 70.91
EPS 0.22 -0.01 0.26
Beta 1.24 2.86 1.83
EBITDA 54.19 22.77 15.88
ROE 1.51% -0.06% 8.59%
As stated in the table above, the company currently has a $22.65 billion market
capitalization, which is much larger than either of its competitors. LinkedIn’s return on
equity has fallen to 1.51%, after averaging 3.74% over the last two years, perhaps
substantiating investors’ concerns regarding slowing growth rates and future
profitability. It could, however, be caused by the implementation of management’s
expansion strategies; increased global marketing expenses, for 7 example, would result
in a lower net income for this quarter but could carry potentially impressive long-term
returns. Ultimately, it doesn’t appear that the share price has dropped as faras it will,
given that the stock is still trading at a price approximately 871 times its earnings. It is
important to note that LinkedIn is very liquid and has not taken on any long-term debt,
which may be a positive next step to relieve its $22.5 million 2013 income tax burden.
Despite Monster’s negative ROE, its lagging profitability (which Monster is employing
some questionable accounting tactics to hide), and LinkedIn’s popularity, Monster
investors clearly expect high levels of growth as its price is still over 600 times greater
than earnings. Dice is quite the opposite. Unlike Monster, Dice has a more reasonable
P/E ratio of 26.33 and healthy financials, though slightly high levels of debt, but has not
historically fared well in the stock market. Ultimately, these measures reflect LinkedIn’s
market dominance and growth potential.
Stock Performance and Analyst Expectations
LinkedIn has largely outperformed both the market and other online information
providers—as measured in the company’s 2013 annual report by the NASDAQ
composite index and the RDG\ Internet Composite Index—over the last two and a half
years (see graph below). 8 These results hold when compared to Monster.com (MWW)
and Dice Holdings (DHX) over longer periods (see the second graph: All LNKD
returns). The one-year rates for these
companies, however, clearly demonstrate the inverse relationship between LinkedIn and
Monster’s stock prices: as LinkedIn rises, there is a corresponding dip in Monster’s
share price, and vice versa. This signals that the two are, essentially, battling for market

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share and revenues. As previously discussed, they are the market darlings over Dice,
whose price has been falling
steadily over both the one- and three-year timeframes in spite of its positive financial
performance. In the debate between Monster and LinkedIn, analysts and financial
writers predominantly side with LinkedIn. One Seeking Alpha article took this issue
head-on, titled, “Buy LinkedIn, Short 1-year returns All LNKD returns 9 Monster As
Online Giants Wage War.”2 The author, an independent financial planner, explains his
pessimistic outlook:
Monster.com is a victim of the changing dynamics of the Social Media Industry, as
companies like LinkedIn have jumped into career services by capitalizing on their large
professional user bases…. We believe that Monster.com will face a declining growth
trajectory, with LinkedIn taking away most of the online recruitment spending by
companies.3 The author cites Monster’s search for a strategic buyer to acquire part or
all of it as evidence of its long-run loss to LinkedIn. So far, with LinkedIn’s $22.7
billion market capitalization dwarfing Monster’s $670.6 million market share, his
prediction seems to be accurate.
Despite its anticipated long-run victory over Monster.com, investors are becoming less
bullish about LinkedIn’s stock, which declined 15% in the wake of Q4 2013 earnings
announcements and the 2014 company outlook. These publications revealed that user
growth was slowing and future revenues were projected to miss analyst estimates,
prompting some investment advisors,
such as Merrill Lynch, to downgrade the stock from “Buy” to “Hold.” Apart from
rallying these waning membership rates, LinkedIn management should not expect to
have a great deal of control over this stock price decline, which is likely the inevitable
impact of LinkedIn’s exceedingly high P/E ratio of 871.31; there is little that can justify
a price that so drastically exceeds earnings, especially at this stage in the company’s
lifecycle. Trefis, a company that analyzes the drivers behind various stock prices,
agrees. Though their analysts predict a substantial growth upside for the company, they
argue that once investor enthusiasm is removed LinkedIn’s stock price should only be
$141 per share, or a P/E multiple of 130.4 2 “Buy LinkedIn, Short Monster As Online
Giants Wage War.” Seeking Alpha. July 9, 2012. 3 “Buy LinkedIn, Short Monster As
Online Giants Wage War.” Seeking Alpha. July 9, 2012. 4 “LinkedIn: Trefis Model.”
Trefis. March 14, 2014. 10 Revenue, Profitability, and Growth Since its IPO,
LinkedIn has experienced tremendous revenue growth, increasing from $522M in 2011
to $1.5B in 2013. Its profitability is reliant on three departments: Talent Solutions,
Marketing Solutions and Premium Subscriptions (explained in more detail below).
Though the majority of LinkedIn’s revenue is derived from the United States, its
international presence is growing, and therefore will play a larger role in LinkedIn’s
future profitability. Talent Solutions Revenue from Talent Solutions is primarily derived
from providing customers, who are primarily corporate recruiters sourcing for
candidates, access to LinkedIn’s database through a paid annual subscription.
LinkedIn’s unique product relies on its data-driven system, helping recruiting teams
avoid the costs associated with prolonged search times by quickly identifying
candidates based on industry, job function, geography, experience, and education,
among others. Additionally, LinkedIn charges an additional fee to outfit corporate
LinkedIn pages so they attract more job seekers and to post job placements on the
LinkedIn website. Fourth Quarter Results: Revenue from Talent Solutions products
totaled $245.6
million, an increase of 53% compared to the fourth quarter of 2012. Talent Solutions
revenue represented 55% of total revenue in the fourth quarter of 2013, compared to
53% in the fourth quarter of 2012.

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Marketing Solutions
LinkedIn also monetizes its website using a personalized advertising model. Customers
can display a graphic or text link on their LinkedIn pages or target viewers using the
same metrics described above.
Fourth Quarter Results: Revenue from Marketing Solutions products totaled $113.5
million, an increase of 36% compared to the fourth quarter of 2012. Marketing
Solutions revenue represented 25% of total revenue in the fourth quarter of 2013,
compared to 27% in the fourth quarter of 2012.
11
Premium Subscriptions
Premium Subscription customers can vary greatly, ranging from individuals who want
increased access to advanced analytic or messaging capabilities, to Sales Solutions
subscribers, who are primarily sales professionals looking to learn more about potential
sales targets, to Job Seeker subscriptions, which help outfit users for employment
networking.
Fourth Quarter Results: Revenue from Premium Subscriptions products totaled $88.1
million, an increase of 48% compared to the fourth quarter of 2012. Premium
Subscriptions represented 20% of total revenue in the fourth quarter of both 2012 and
2013. Source: TNW, “LinkedIn’s Talent Solution Service”
As is evident in the graph above, LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions make up the majority of
its revenue, and this percentage has been increasing each quarter. Though the remainder
of 2013 is not depicted above, its proportional revenue has somewhat stabilized,
averaging 56% for the year. Meanwhile, the revenue gained from Premium
Subscriptions has remained unwavering at 20% of total revenue for the last two years,
including the last three quarters of 2013.
12 These metrics suggest that 80% of LinkedIn’s revenue is subject to appealing to its
corporate customers in recruiting and marketing. Given that its success with these
groups depends on user volume and activity, LinkedIn’s focus on member growth
through international expansion is understandable, though they have not been dedicating
as many resources to addressing lags in user engagement. Perhaps or this reason, the
company lowered monthly premium subscription fees from $42 to $25; because
Premium Subscription revenues have not changed as a percentage of total revenues, it
appears that demand is elastic and the reduced price has prompted increased
subscription quantities. The company can expect stable profits in this area, then,
regardless of price.
It is worth pointing out that while the majority of LinkedIn’s revenues come from the
United States, the company has prioritized international expansion as a part of its
growth plan. The table below outlines LinkedIn’s domestic and international revenues.
LinkedIn’s established international popularity grants credibility to its expansion plans,
as its product has already proven it can thrive outside the United States labor market.

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FINDINGS
Naukri.com was launched in March 1997. The company was started as a floorless
employment exchange. It was a database of resume, jobs and recruitment consultants.
Conceived as a platform of jobseekers and hiring managers meet, the services went
commercial in October 1997.
It all started when Sanjeev Bikhchandani quit his corporate job at Hindustan Milkfood
Manufacturers (now Glaxo Smithkline) and founded two companies- Info Edge and Indmark.
Info Edge offered salary reports to various categories of college graduates such as engineering
and MBAs. Salary reports were sold to companies, somewhere between 5000 to 10,000 INR.
Sanjeev and his business partners at Info Edge operated from servants’ quarter located in
Sanjeev’s home.

And if we talk about LINKDIN

The company was founded in December 2002 by Reid Hoffman and founding team members
from PayPal and Socialnet.com (Allen Blue, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Lee Hower, Konstantin
Guericke, Stephen Beitzel, David Eves, Ian McNish, Yan Pujante, Chris Saccheri). In late 2003,
Sequoia Capital led the Series A investment in the company.

In August 2004, LinkedIn reached 1 million users. In March 2006, LinkedIn achieved its first
month of profitability. In April 2007, LinkedIn reached 10 million users. [22] In February 2008,
LinkedIn launched a mobile version of the site.

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RECOMMEDATION

It is desirable to launch an advertising campaign to attract more customers.

Internet users are increasing day by day. Approximately, 7.5 million urban Indians are
using the net.
Further, with broadband infrastructure being rolled out, there are more opportunities on
the net.
The scope of online recruitment is, therefore, increasing. Like any other online
recruitment company, it has the advantage of being a low cost medium of recruitment.
SHIKSHA.com and JEEVANSAATHI.com are the group portals of naukri.com and
have great potential.
And in terms of LINKDIN
• Targeted International Expansion
• Become Domestic Market Leader
• International Expansion: Regulation and Public Perception
• Vulnerability of the Social Media Industry
23 amassed a detailed and massive database containing 280 million members’
employment history, and have the analytic capabilities to effectively sort and interpret
this information. Finally, LinkedIn’s performance thus far has established that there is a
strong demand both domestically and internationally.

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