sir,how good is the new ipo info edge it has great sites like naukri.com etc can i invest in it  (are the valuations cheap)

This could become big. really big keep a very close eye on this. It is an extension of our Internet story.But the valuations appear a bit stiff compared to the other player TV18 which looks to be very very attractively valued.

Info Edge should list @ trailing p/e of 80-100. If it lists at p/e of 50-60 it is bargain. Rediff is priced @ 30 times sale of '05 and that includes a Newspaper in US where margin/growth are not comparable to portal. But their margin on partal is 75% which is much higher than Info Edge. Both brands are strong so my estimate is 1200Cr mkt cap on listing. Besides this is first and only pure portal listing so there is going to be demand at any price.

Companies who look for people they give them money as royalty or commission, Resume creation,etc, majority of the work are off-line, very little as ads...

Oversubscription levels of infoedge is also very concerning.
This could lead to a flurry of dotcom IPOs, and beleive that will be
the turning point, the bubble will burst, if not now, after a few 
quarter results of Info edge after they list.

It is futile to compare an Infoedge to a TV18. TV18 revenue model from its internet ventures is based on completely different grounds. Before deciding on anything and comparing Infoedge to TV18, please try and find out the history of wsj(wallstreet journal) and how long it has been around. We all know how it has survived and prospered. Shaadi and Naukri are very narrow usages of internet but TV18 is into the media business so anytime they want to start off a new internet business, they can leverage their media properties(internet and on TV) in a very big way.

It should list at a premium of at least 20-30%. But somehow, compared to TV18, Infoedge doesnt just excite me as its market is very limited. Unless of course, they have planned to enter newer areas on the internet.

Certainly not. Infoedge should list at round Rs 500 and have a market cap of Rs 1300crores. but I am not that upbeat on it as I would be on a TV 18.

Info edge 600+

In less than a decade, Sanjeev Bikhchandani has turned a garage start-

up into India's

only listed internet company worth Rs 1,000 crore on the stock

markets. Where does

he go from here? By Kushan Mitra

I

t's a recent wintry morning, and Sanjeev Bikhchandani

is sitting in a shoebox cabin at his corporate

headquarters in Noida, near Delhi. "I never knew going

public would require so many of my signatures," he

grumbles, trying to clear a small pile of papers on his

table. It has been just six days since his internet

company InfoEdge began offering shares in itself to

public, and much to the 43-year-old entrepreneur's

delight, the IPO has been oversubscribed 55 times.

There are reasons why Bikhchandani should feel proud

about it. For one, it's the first internet stock to list in

India and the first since Sify and Rediff listed on the

nasdaq during the dotcom boom days of 1999-2000.

For another, InfoEdge, which owns the country's #1 job

portal, http://naukri.com/ - , stands to unlock about Rs 1,000

crore in shareholder value. Not bad for a portal that

was born in a garage less than 10 years ago.

The listing (slated for between November 21-24, well after BT went to

press) will also turn the young entrepreneur into a millionaire-his 43

per cent holding in InfoEdge puts his net worth upwards of Rs 370

crore (assuming the stock lists at the issue price of Rs 320)-and get

him shoulder-rubbing with the other dotcom millionaires, Sify's Raju

Vegesna and Rediff's Ajit Balakrishnan. Bikhchandani, who only

recently disposed his 10-year-old Opel Astra (and bought a Honda

Accord) after being left high and dry on a family vacation, takes pains

to clarify that his worth is all 'notional', but he's fooling no one.

What's got investors so excited about InfoEdge? One is the fact that

it's the only dotcom to list in India and, hence, serves as a proxy for

the new economy opportunity. Two, InfoEdge itself has been growing

rapidly. Four years ago, it had revenues of Rs 3.78 crore and a loss of

Rs 3.26 crore. Last financial year (ended March 31, 2006), it had

revenues of Rs 84 crore and a net profit of Rs 10 crore. In the first

quarter of this year, it upped revenues to Rs 29.23 crore and net

profits to Rs 5.89 crore. If the company continues to double its

Looking for a

job, house or

a partner?

Bikhchandani

has it all

covered via his

three portals

revenues and profits every year for the next two, the stock will trade at

approximately 30 times its 2006-07 earnings and 20 times 2007-08

earnings. A pre-IPO report from brokerage firm Anagram says, "Looking

at the prospects of the business and the track record of the company,

we expect it to maintain the same growth trajectory going forward."

While InfoEdge has two other

portals, http://jeevansathi.com/ - and

http://99acres.com/ - , and an offline

executive search division (see

The InfoEdge Empire), it's

http://naukri.com/ - that makes it so

valuable. Currently, the size of

the online recruitment industry

is estimated at Rs 135 crore

and is said to be growing at 35

per cent year-on-year.

Bikhchandani believes that a

growing economy, especially

the services sector within it,

will create opportunities for

thousands of new jobs, and

recruiters will move the

process of recruitment online

for reasons ranging from

convenience to costs to better

targeting of potential

employees. For instance, just

the IT/ITEs industry, he says

citing NASSCOM numbers, will

grow to $60 billion (Rs

2,70,000 crore) in exports by

2010. That will mean

recruitment of software

engineers and call centre

agents by the thousands.

Already, attrition rates in this

industry range between 25 and

40 per cent a year, meaning that companies are constantly recruiting.

For Naukri, that represents a huge growth opportunity. Says

Bikhchandani: "You could say that we have benefited from the huge

demand for talent in this economy."

When people get jobs, they like to get married and buy a house too.

That's roughly the reasoning behind InfoEdge's forays into two other

The InfoEdge Empire

It runs three portals and an offline

executive search firm. But Naukri is

the jewel in the crown.

http://naukri.com/ - : India's leading job-search

portal, started out in March 1997 as a

basic HTML website, now incorporates

the latest Web 2.0 technologies.

Companies pay money to post listings

and placement consultants pay to

mine Naukri's database of millions of

resumes

Quadrangle: An offline executive

search firm that InfoEdge acquired in

November 2000, this division helps

companies find executives for high-

end management or technical

positions

http://jeevansathi.com/ - : Started in 1998, but

spun off and acquired back in

September 2004, this is India's third

largest online matrimonial site. Users

can surf for life partners, but need to

pay for contact information

http://99acres.com/ - : Started in September

2005, this is a real estate classifieds

site, where consumers can search

freely for apartments and houses,

while realty developers and brokers

pay for listing

dotcom segments: matrimonials and real estate. Indians spend an

estimated Rs 50,000 crore annually on weddings and wedding-related

stuff, and online matchmaking hopes to get a slice of what has

traditionally been an involved offline process (that is, the search for a

life partner). Similarly, the overall real estate market is currently worth

a staggering (and fast-growing) Rs 2 lakh crore, and InfoEdge is looking

at a very small part of it-property hunting. "The company is diversifying

its portfolio, and has huge potential to ride along with the booming

Indian economy," says the Anagram research report.

How It All Began

Until 1990, Bikhchandani was a Marketing Manager at

Hindustan Milk Marketing (now GSK Consumer). Then,

one day, he decided to turn an entrepreneur. He

launched InfoEdge out of his father's garage in Delhi's

Swasth Vihar, with the original idea of doing salary

surveys. In his two years at hmm, Bikhchandani had

often noticed that his colleagues would always start

with the back pages whenever they read a business

publication. As he discovered, the back pages carried

all the appointment advertisements. Then, in 1991, the

Department of Telecom (dot) came out with a proposal

to launch a videotext service that people could

subscribe to, and asked private developers to come up

with proposals. Bikhchandani prepared a presentation

on the potential for job searches through such a

service. However, as with many things those days, the

dot proposal never saw the light of day.

His business pottered along for a few years, earning

decent money, but nothing substantial. However, a

downturn in 1996 made Bikhchandani take up a job

with The Pioneer, a job that he says was to hold him in

good stead in the years to come. But it was a chance

visit to it Asia at Pragati Maidan in Delhi in late 1996

that was to change his life-this is where he first heard the word

'internet' and a few days later realised that the proposal he had made

to the dot could easily be resurrected on this medium. In March 1997,

still operating out of his father's garage and with his brother paying for

server space in the us, Bikchandani's text-only http://naukri.com/ - went live.

India had a total of 14,000 internet connections those days, and most

of those were text-only connections. Yet, at the end of a year of

operations, Naukri had made Rs 2.35 lakh and by the close of 1998-99,

it made Rs 18 lakh. Bikhchandani and his collaborators knew they were

"Jeevansathi

isn't very

strong in the

NRI segment,

but it has its

strengths

elsewhere and

we will work

towards

improving

those"

Hitesh Oberoi

COO/InfoEdge

onto something.

But late in 1999, Bikhchandani started facing new challenges. The

internet was on everybody's lips and other companies had begun to

enter the sphere of online job listings. Realising that Naukri was

competing with rivals with far greater financial muscle, Bikhchandani,

who had initially never wanted funding, decided that some money

would be essential to survive. Despite several funding offers, he

settled on ICICI Ecotec (now merged with ICICI Venture), which valued

the firm at Rs 45 crore and took a 15 per cent stake for Rs 7.3 crore.

The funding deal was closed in April 2000, days after InfoEdge had

declared revenues of Rs 36 lakh for the year 1999-2000. A few months

later, the dotcom bust would hit the world.

Surviving the Bust

In late 1999, Bikhchandani made two decisions that

would change InfoEdge forever. The first was to accept

funding, and the second was to hire Hitesh Oberoi, an

IIM-Bangalore and IIT-Delhi grad, who was then

heading the regional ice-cream business of Hindustan

Lever and had come to Bikhchandani for career advice

on whether to join a dotcom from whom he had an

offer. Before Oberoi knew, he was heading InfoEdge's

marketing operations and one of the first things he did

was to adopt an offline business model by recruiting

sales people to actually go to companies and make

sales.

Much to everybody's surprise, it soon became apparent

that the sales people were 'breaking even' within three months of

being hired. The company rapidly expanded its sales team and,

crucially, its sales reach, with offices being set up in Mumbai and

Bangalore, just as the it services boom was about to hit the Indian

economy.

Oberoi also played an important role in almost forcing Bikhchandani to

change the 'look and feel' of the site. "I was rooted in Web 0.0,

believing in pure text," Bikhchandani jokes. He also agreed to spend

money on over-the-line marketing. In 2000, Naukri became one of the

first firms to use the scrolling advertisement on TV. With TV channels

not realising the potential for this form of advertising, Oberoi sealed

amazing deals. "We got 8,000 seconds of TV time during the Olympics

in 2000," he says, "for Rs 3.5 lakh. That is a steal any which way you

look at it." Hits shot up, as did resume submissions past the 1,000-

mark a day. Despite better-funded (and Bikhchandani notes, better-

Early days:

Bikhchandani

at his home-

office circa

1991

engineered) competition, Naukri retained the top spot-even though

there is no accurate way of measuring page hits (Bikhchandani says he

gave up on that a while ago). Naukri's brand positioning created all

those years ago has stood it in good stead, with more than 10,000

resumes added daily now.

But Bikhchandani attributes another factor to why InfoEdge survived

the bust. During his time in The Pioneer, the newspaper experienced

some extremely difficult times financially, and he played an

instrumental role in resolving some of these problems. So, when the

dotcom bust happened, Bikhchandani knew that the only way forward

was to batten down the hatches and live off a bootstrap budget,

because, "I knew I wasn't going to get a second round of funding".

In the business plan that

Bikhchandani had presented

ICICI, InfoEdge was expected to

have revenues of Rs 12 crore

by 2005-06. It zoomed past

that number in 2003-04,

posting revenues of Rs 19 crore

and the company declared its

first profit of Rs 76 lakh. This

enabled InfoEdge to buy back a

majority share in

http://jeevansathi.com/ - , a site the

company had spun off in 2000.

It also allowed Oberoi to

convince Bikhchandani to

spend money on something

more substantial on the

advertising front (the company

spends a fifth of its revenue on

marketing). After a

misadventure with a local firm,

Naukri appointed FCB Ulka as

their agency, and a series of memorable adverts were made,

culminating in the extremely popular 'Hari Sadu' commercial.

It was around this time, Bikhchandani decided that the time was right

to go public. "China's largest online search, 51job, had recently gone

public (on NASDAQ) at incredible valuations and investment bankers

were trying to convince me to do the same," says the man. "Even

though ICICI Venture had never put any pressure on me to go public, I

had wanted to ever since I had taken funding. But after visiting Hong

THE BIKHCHANDANI ESSENTIALS

AGE: 43

EDUCATION: BA

Economics, St

Stephen's College,

1984; PGDM, IIM

Ahmedabad, 1989

WORK EXPERIENCE:

Account Executive,

Lintas (1984-1987);

Brand Manager, HMM (1989-1990);

Business Development Manager, The

Pioneer* (1996-2000)

FAMILY: Married, with two children

MANAGEMENT PHILOSOPHY: Run

an open organisation, and delegate

responsibility

*This was in addition to running

InfoEdge

Kong and Singapore, I decided that I didn't want to list abroad." So,

that's how InfoEdge ended up offering its shares in India.

The Road Ahead

But being a publicly-held company is, as any CEO who heads one will

tell you, a double-edge sword. While it does create wealth, it also put

enormous pressure on the company to deliver ever-larger profits. No

doubt, Naukri is the current market leader with a traffic share of 55 per

cent for July 2006, according to Comscore, a website traffic monitoring

firm. But all of its old and new competitors are larger as business

groups. http://monster.com/ - , #2 in India, is a billion-dollar jobs portal based in

the us; TimesJobs is part of media giant Bennett Coleman & Co,

publishers of The Times of India and The Economic Times; JobStreet,

which has partnered with tv18, has a strong presence in Asia, with

revenues of 55 million Malaysian ringgits (or Rs 67 crore). "The job

market in India is booming, and we would be stupid to believe that

there will not be competition," Bikhchandani admits.

With more Indians going online and thus shifting away

from traditional classifieds in the newspapers (reports

suggest that online sites already dominate job listings),

Bikchandani believes there is enough room for four-five

players. "We will continue to offer unique services to

our customers," he says. As an example, Bikhchandani

talks about how Naukri has recently started to offer

SMS job alerts, "The idea was born out of customer

need for a client in Pune and we offered it." Naukri was

also the first (and to date only) online job portal in India

to offer really simple syndication (RSS) feeds of

relevant jobs. "We will adapt Web 2.0 technologies if

we feel they can improve the user experience,"

Bikhchandani says.

Meanwhile, Jeevansathi and 99acres are only beginning

to make money for the company. In the last three

financials years, they have provided an aggregate of

only 6 per cent of the company's revenues. Is InfoEdge,

therefore, a one-hit wonder? It is not as if InfoEdge

hasn't shut businesses before-it started two sites,

Indiaventure2000 and Roltanet, soon after it received

funding from ICICI, but quietly shut them down.

" http://jeevansathi.com/ - is number three in its segment, it

isn't very strong in the NRI segment or South India, but it has its

strengths elsewhere and we will work towards improving those," says

Oberoi. On 99acres, Bikhchandani says that online realty searches are

"Sanjeev is

diligent. He

has also been

fortunate with

the people he

has hired and

the

management

team that he

has built"

Saurabh

Srivastava

Angel investor

still a novelty in India, "but we believe it is a segment that is waiting to

boom, because people want targeted and relevant searches." He also

believes that brokers and developers will soon realise that online is a

far better way of getting their message across than through traditional

classifieds.

Saurabh Srivastava, an it-entrepreneur-turned-angel investor and now

a member of the InfoEdge board, believes that Bikhchandani's success

is well earned. "Sanjeev has been a very diligent and dedicated

entrepreneur, but yes, I would say he has also been fortunate with the

people he has hired and the management team that he has built

around at InfoEdge," says Srivastava. Perhaps, it is to Bikhchandani's

credit that he has been able to hold onto most of his key executives.

He hasn't just allowed them to grow and take on greater responsibility,

but also shared company stock. Oberoi, for instance, owns 7.6 per cent

of InfoEdge.

As Srivastava points out, the space around InfoEdge is growing at a

fantastic pace, and the company is not a start-up anymore.

Bikhchandani will have to expand his management team and take on

greater risks. And whether he likes it or not, Bikhchandani's success

henceforth will be measured not by the number of resumes in Naukri's

database or hits per day, but the price of InfoEdge's stock. That's just

the way it is. One thing is for sure, though. India's newest dotcom

millionaire is in for some exciting times ahead.

Hi, Prashantji, heard that you were at the AGM in Delhi and it all folded up in 10 minutes, people were shouting for food packets and when one shareholder wanted to ask a question he was told by a fellow shareholder "Bhaav badh raha hai toh tere ko kya puchna hai".

WOW...if this was done by people planted by mgmt then its pathetic.

No , the crowd wanted all resolutions to be passed and food packets to be distributed!

Sanjeev jee's response rests any doubts on the management part, at least.

Sanjeev jee's response rests any doubts on the management part, at least.

With Indian companies diving into the blogosphere, can corporate honchos be far behind?

Top executives of some leading Indian companies, including Infosys Technologies, Rediff and Info Edge (known for Naukri.com), are giving in to the lure of blogs.

They dwell on matters as diverse as personal impressions at the World Economic Forum (WEF) to expressing views on the Prime Minister’s comments on CEO salary curbs.

Importantly, they see this as a valuable tool to get across to clients and employees quickly.

Infosys set up the Infosys blog ( http://www.infosysblogs.com/thinkflat - www.infosysblogs.com/thinkflat ) in an attempt to create a forum where it could share its thoughts with clients and employees.

“It is and will always remain a challenge for top-level executives to take to regular blogging, as it becomes difficult to separate the views of the individual from that of the company. Top executives, therefore, need to be extremely careful while blogging.”

Agrees Rediff founder and CEO, Mr Ajit Balakrishnan, who points out that while writing blogs can be “relaxing,” CEOs of listed companies need to guard against expressing opinion on outlook about the company or even the industry in their blogs and should rather stick to neutral themes.

Among the handful of Indian CEOs who are hooked onto blogging is Naukri.com CEO Mr Sanjeev Bikhchandani.

“I have been blogging for the last 3-4 months, and I have thoroughly enjoyed it. There is no set theme and my blogs have varied from how I got hooked onto blogging to the issue of reservations and even the PM’s recent comments on CEO salaries.”

basant ji you have rightly qritten the names of 4 companies in descending order.....naukri and monster are way ahead of others....

people dont say put your resume on job portals..they say i ll upload my resume on naukri or i ll upload my resume on monster...so you can imagine how tough it is for jobstreet to create a market share for itself....i am not saying its impossible..its tough

May i know the reason for waiting?? is it because valuations are too high or management needs to be tested or something else which you can think which our amateur brains cant??

Will surely listen to it as soon as i am at my home...

i think infedge has some cutting edge over others.....

In this business is there any possibility of tying with other job portal in US so that  they  can exchange resumes.

http://www.contentsutra.com/entry/419-matrimonial-job-sites-user-figure-to-surge-47-in-2007-08/ - Matrimonial, Job Sites User Figure To Surge 47 % In 2007-08

By http://www.paidcontent.org/contact/1562/ - Anupama Chandrasekaran - Thu 19 Jul 2007 06:41 PM PST

These social networking sites, immensely popular with netizens, especially the young, are seeing a rapidly increasing number of 'communities' helping both job seekers and employers.

With 100 million internet users in the country, India is now the fourth largest country in terms of internet penetration, a recent Assocham study points out. According to Assocham, e-recruitment is gaining ground as a preferred medium of hiring in India. For job seekers, especially, the internet has opened up a new world of possibilities in job searching, turning it into a 24-hour-a day market place. The internet is arguably the most immediate, convenient and comprehensive medium for employment seekers to research and prospect for jobs.

Staffing services providers like Cloud 9 India, Pathway Recruitment Agency use such sites as a platform to hire and have links to their own websites. Populated with thousands of members each of these communities have a huge database of job seekers and can reach them within seconds

Current Story

http://www.brijj.com - www.brijj.com   is an indian version of linkedin.com whose alexa ranking is 151.