Technology

JustDial Local Search up 33%, MasterApp by Sept

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JustDial Local SearchJust Dial’s Search maintained a strong growth trajectory: searches were up 33% yoy in 1QFY16 with strong growth across business segments. Tier-II/III cities are growing at a very fast pace, supporting 20% growth for the top-5 cities. Steady growth in paid campaigns (ended at 346,000 in 1QFY16 in 15.3 mn listings) and steady pricing helped Just Dial sustain a 25% revenue growth in FY2015. Churn rate remains unchanged at 44% levels given high mortality and shift rate. Just Dial shared internet penetration limiting growth for the search business.

Just Dial aims to launch master app by September 2015 and is investing in back-end infrastructure in order to enhance

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Microsoft Azure Cloud – Too Late & Shrinking Developer Eco-System

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Azure Cloud Late Entrant Microsoft is spending significant time talking about the transition from on-premises to cloud in its business. As part of this, the question is how much demand for the cloud products is transition of existing workloads vs. the building of new workloads. We believe the answer is relatively simple, with Office365 largely being existing workload migration while Azure is new workloads.

The debate in our view is how

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Online Property Classifieds – Penetration in Single Digit

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Real estate advertisement market in India (including print, hoardings and online media) was worth ~Rs40bn in FY14. The online penetration is very small, and all online media (real estate classifieds, Google) accounted for only ~Rs3bn (~8%) of the total market.

CommonFloor and Housing.com two new kids on the block – having a very media mind & voice share, are still lagging behind the early entrants in the supply side. We believe that although having access to capital helps, beefing up this part of the business is more about on the ground execution rather than platform, and

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Jabong & FabFurnish Sales / Profit Metrics

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Jabong Sales MetricsIn an industry where not much data is available given most companies are unlisted, we have got some details from Rocket Internet which has stake in Jabong (fashion) & FabFurnish (furniture).

Jabong’s Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) rose 136% yoy in CY14 leading to a 136% yoy increase in net revenue. Encouragingly, Jabong indicated that majority of the orders are being placed by repeat customers. FabFurnish’s GMV too rose 125%yoy during the same period. Jabong’s gross loss expanded to Rs1.6bn (+400%yoy), indicating high competition. Capex intensity has risen from 3.7% capex/sales in CY13 to 4.8% in CY14 on investment in IT and infrastructure. Net working capital too rose by ~250%yoy driven by

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Google Mobile Search Queries Exceed Desktop in 10 Countries

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Google Mobile SearchSearch Giant, Google indicated that mobile searches now exceed desktop in 10 countries, including the US, and that users have more ability to tune in and tune out of messages (micro-moments) so mobile ad formats have to match user needs.

Google is working hard to provide advertisers new tools to enable positive ROI ad spending and better visibility on ad spend effectiveness, which suggests the company is confident that its ads add value. Google introduced a new reporting dashboard that enables automated bidding across display and

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Facebook’s Advertising & Video Platform – The RoadMap

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Facebook Videos AdvertisingFacebook appears to continue to have strong momentum in its core business, has significant new opportunities in areas like video and payments, is beginning to commercialize other apps.

Facebook made several important announcements related to its Video initiatives, including i) it is upping the maximum video upload file size to 1.5G, which is enough to support video as long as 45 minutes (i.e., its first foray into longer form video content); ii) it is rolling out an embedded video player for third-party apps and sites, which increases the reach of videos off-network, provides new solutions to publishers/apps, and represents a new competitor to YouTube; iii) announced the availability of spherical videos on the News Feed; and iv) suggested that pre- and/or post-roll ads in videos could soon be available.

Facebook highlighted three key data points of its Video Platform: 1) 3bn videos per day, of which a low percentage are

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Google’s Video / Display Advertising Metric & Road Ahead

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Youtube Display Video AdsGoogle’s VP of Display and Video Advertising Products, Neal Mohan highlighted brand advertising as a growth opportunity for Google and YouTube as the centerpiece of that effort.

Mohan provided new metrics about YouTube, including: 1) it attracts over one billion users per month, 2) the amount of watch-time is growing 50% y/y, 3) the innovative TrueView skippable ad unit on YouTube is growing impressions nearly 75% y/y, 4) YouTube has more 18-34 year-olds than any cable channel, 5) YouTube payouts (rev share) to content creators grew by ~50% y/y in 2014, and 6) that there was over seven million hours of ad content on YouTube and last year four of the top 10 most viewed videos on YouTube were ads created by brands/their agencies. These data points

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What does Digital India entail, Who Benefits ?

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Digital India is an umbrella initiative comprising of several programs which the government believes should help transform India into a connected economy. Many of these programs have been in existence for several years now but have not been able to make much headway. This is evident from that fact that of the Rs1.13tn (US$18bn) capital outlay for Digital India. That said, what’s different now is that the isolated programs have now been brought on a common platform. This should help create both synergies and a greater sense of purpose. Moreover, under the Digital India flag, the Narendra Modi led BJP Government has articulated a clear vision for the digital future of the country. In our view, having the right vision, effective marketing strategy and

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FabFurnish – Bringing Home Decor on Desktop & Ship to Doorstep

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FabFurnish - Online Home Decor ShoppingFabFurnish is the first Large Scale online Furniture & Home Decor retailer in India. The overall furniture market in India is over US$20bn and growing 15-20% p.a. as per FabFurnish. More than 95% of the market is unorganized, and within organized market, large retailers are limited and have presence mostly in top 10 cities. Given high rental costs, prices in offline stores (for large retailers) are also very high, creating opportunity for the online model to disrupt existing traditional distribution channels.

Online & Offline Business Model
FabFurnish follwos a hybrid Online & Offline Model known as Omni Channel Retailing.. It has 4 offline showrooms (mostly in tier 1 cities) through franchisees. This is primarily meant to draw attention and get more visitors and convert them into

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Peek Into Mobile / Internet Business of Times Group

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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

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