Peek Into Mobile / Internet Business of Times Group

Gaana - Times Internet Business REviewTimes Internet has over 20 businesses across various categories News, Sports, Lifestyle, Classifieds, Entertainment platforms, commerce, etc. Cumulatively Times properties get 120 monthly visits with 6 billion page views per month. Half of the traffic comes from mobile. News and Classifieds account for large portion of revenues for the group. Key focus areas remain a) magicbricks.com, b) Gaana.com, c) Cricbuzz and d) Coupondunia.

Magicbricks the REal Estate venture was started in 2006 by the group. Revenues in FY15 were at Rs771m and have grown at over 58% CAGR over the last few years. Total paid clients were at over 24k in FY15 and total listings were at 630k as of Dec-14. Current run rate of monthly collections implies annual collections of US$20m as per management. The company is investing in verified listings (204k verified listings as of Jan15), and building improved user interface.

Gaana is an online music streaming service challenging YouTube and Pandora’s dominance. It has a collection of over 3 million songs and 11.2 million app installs. Since April 2014, it has seen 17% monthly growth in mobile app installs. Revenue model is primarily advertising based (80%) and subscription based is 20%.

Cribuzz was acquired by Times group in Nov 2014. It had 60 million visitors during last IPL and is currently targeting 75m users during upcoming Cricket World Cup. As per management, Gaana and Cricbuzz would be the first properties of Times Group to reach over 100 million users.

Coupondunia was acquired in April-14 and is comparable to Retailmenot in the US. It has current revenue run rate of US$4m.