68 Swami Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. These observations helped Bikhchandani figure out that there is a huge frag- mented database of jobs with different placement consultants and jobs are a high-interest category. If someone could consolidate the database of live jobs and put it in one place and continuously update it, that would be a very powerful product and money could be made out of this. Bikhchandani realized this by the end of 1989 and early 1990. He quit his job in October 1990 and along with a partner started the company Info Edge (India) Private Limited. This company was initially into databases, trademark searching services, report writing, and so on. But the jobs database idea remained dormant in his mind. Why the Name Naukri.com? While there are many factors that contributed to making Naukri.com a success story, part of the credit goes to its unique nomenclature. The Naukri.com team had intentions of giving the Web site an English name. A number of names were thought of, such as, jobsindia, indiajobs, employindia, indiaemploy, careerindia, careersindia, indiacareers, employmentIndia, and recruitmentindia. To their disappointment, however, all these names were already registered. Therefore, a compromise had to be made and a decision was made to name the Web site Naukri. Opponents of this name said that this name was down market and had the connotation of “servitude” (naukar) attached to it. But the name was retained because of its memorability and uniqueness. Interestingly, Sanjeev Bikhchandani considers the brand name to be an asset for his company. Bikhchandani says, “It’s turned out to be a great asset for us. At that time, I thought it would be a handicap.” Moreover, he did not believe that the Hindi name would be a handicap in the southern part of India for the simple reason that Hindi movies are released in south India and they are avidly watched there. Why Naukri.com was not Affected by the Dot-Com Meltdown The parent company of Naukri.com is 14 years old. It launched Naukri.com in March 1997 and operated for 3 years without venture capital. Since venture capital funding was not taken upfront, the company had to make money in order to survive. Dot-coms themselves are just about 7 years old and were not fashionable at the time when Naukri.com was launched. Therefore, by the time dot-coms became popular, Naukri.com was already profitable and without venture capital funding too. Venture capital funding was taken merely to scale up an existing profitable model. Job Search at Naukri.com 69 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Bikhchandani claims the dot-com bust in fact helped Naukri.com. When competitors came to India, they had a high cost model and did not know how to make money because of their unfamiliarity with the market. Naukri.com, on the other hand, was already making money. Naukri.com did not spend its money on advertising. It just put it in a bank, put feet on the street, hired salespeople, built client relationships, and opened new offices. When the meltdown actually happened, competitors could not get a second round of funding whereas Naukri.com did not need a second round of funding. This helped Naukri.com in beating competition. During the meltdown, foreign competitors such as monster, jobstreet, and jobsdb, came to India with the promise of sending Indian technical manpower abroad. The meltdown resulted in a reduced demand for Indian technical manpower. The foreign portals then lost interest in the Indian market. There was additional pressure on them in the United States. Bikhchandani says, “We used the last 4 years of meltdown very, very profitably in consolidating our business, building our brand, moving in a planned manner, not spending our money foolishly, and really strengthening our position. So the meltdown actually helped us because it really killed our competition.” Organizational Structure The organization chart of Naukri.com is presented in Figure 2. Figure 2. Organization chart of Naukri.com Regional M anager (Nort h) Heads of various departments (IT, Marketing, Operations, HR) Area Manager s Regional M anager (Sout h) Regional Manager (Wes t) Area Manager s Area Manager s Team Members (Senior Executives) Team Members (Senior Executives) Team Members (Senior Executives) Chief Executiv e Officer 70 Swami Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Human Resource Management at Naukri.com The profiles of various management personnel at Naukri.com is presented in Appendix 1. It is clear from the management profiles that Naukri.com has a fairly sophisticated pool of talent in its management. The work environment at Naukri.com is also very open and friendly. According to the HR manager, problems are resolved by discussions. Even if it is an interdepartmental issue, appointments are not required for discussions with the personnel of the other department. For instance, if the marketing team was working on product development, it would need to work in close coordination with technology because technology is ultimately going to deploy the product over the net. If the marketing people have any queries, then they can straight away walk up to the technology people and get the issue resolved. People at Naukri.com are given opportunities to learn even at the cost of making mistakes. In the words of the HR manager, “People here get a lot of opportunity to learn by making mistakes, I would say. Because a lot of responsibility is given and space is given, that you try out things and try to learn on your own.” The management at Naukri.com also encourages idea generation. When a new member joins a team, he/she is only assigned a task. How to accomplish the task is his/her prerogative. This prompts the new team member to formulate new ideas to do the assigned task in the best possible way. Since organizational issues are recognized as one of the major challenge areas that Naukri.com is facing, during recruitment, attention is paid to ensure that the selected candidate has the right kind of attitude that would help him/her fit into the system. Says the HR manager, “If the attitude is right, people will always learn the skills of doing the task.” The regional offices themselves hire employees from campus recruitment for the regional offices, while the head office helps the regional offices when lateral recruitment is to be done. This assistance is provided to them in terms of short-listing the candidates and conducting telephone interviews. The regional offices themselves proceed with the final interview and selection process. Product/Service Offerings of Naukri.com The products offered by Naukri.com are aimed at two broad groups of customers: (1) recruiters and (2) job seekers. The products for each group are explained below. Job Search at Naukri.com 71 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Products for Recruiters Naukri.com offers a range of services to recruiters. A brief description of each product/service follows: a. Best Places to Work: An exclusive section for top companies, this is the first section that appears on the Naukri.com home page. Naukri.com develops a career micro-site for the customer company with a link from the home page. This ensures maximum branding and visibility to a company’s recruitment requirements. This package provides the Web-enabled Re- sponse Management Software, and e-Apps, free of charge. b. Job Gallery: A listing in this section makes the client company directly accessible from the Naukri.com home page. Vacancy listings may be customized like the vacancies in a newspaper. Client company is seen with other quality organizations and vacancies are highlighted. c. Hot Vacancies: This is the premium job listing service provided by Naukri.com to its clients. This gives the client companies’ vacancies greater visibility in a less cluttered space and they get listed with other quality jobs. Their listing gets covered in the Classifieds section, where free Job Alerts are done for the client companies’ vacancies and a logo is included on listings. d. Classifieds: Designed to be brief and to the point, the format ensures easy access of information. Vacancies are listed in specific and relevant categories, thereby ensuring a higher degree of relevant response. e. Résumé Database Access: RESDEX, for short, this product makes the client company’s recruitment exercise simple, targeted, and focused as an “in your hands” solution. The client may search profiles that are specific to the client’s requirements and access fresh and active job seekers anytime from anywhere. RESDEX contains the highest quality résumés available in India today. f. Electronic Application: This product is also referred to as e-Apps. The e- Apps Response Management System reduces time spent on managing applications by 80%. CVs are collected in a database format, which can be used to filter out relevant candidates from a large pool in a matter of minutes. The first four services are job-posting services. The point to note here is that all of the above services/products offered by Naukri.com to employers are paid products/services. 72 Swami Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Products for Job Seekers Naukri.com offers a range of services to job seekers. A brief description of each product/service follows. a. Résumé Flash: Naukri.com has a database of 1,000 leading placement consultants in India. For the requisite fee, Naukri.com sends the job seeker’s résumé to 800 or 1,000 placement consultants. The choice of the number of consultants to whom the job seeker wants to have his/her résumé sent is entirely his/hers. b. Résumé Development: Naukri.com’s experts help the job seeker to develop a powerful and effective résumé. This service is also rendered for a fee. c. Job Mail: All the jobs posted on the site are first matched with a job seeker’s profile and if there is a fit, the job listing is e-mailed to the prospective employee. This service may be subscribed to for a 3- or 6- month period. d. Job Alert: All the vacancies that Naukri.com receives are mailed to the job seeker. This is a free service. e. Résumé Display: In the Paid Résumé Display option, the job seeker’s CV is visible to all recruiters/HR Managers/Placement Consultants who visit Naukri.com looking for candidates free of charge to them. This service may be subscribed to for a period from 6 months to 1 year. f. Résumé Manager: This is a free service in which the job seeker’s CV is visible only to Naukri.com’s clients who have purchased the RESDEX product from Naukri.com. In addition to the above products/services, Naukri.com also offers certain services such as short-listing candidates and organizing walk-in interviews which no other medium does. This makes Naukri.com an end-to-end recruitment solutions provider. Technology Involved Because the services offered by Naukri.com are deployed over the Internet, it requires a very sound technological backup. The organization has a 20-strong team of technology persons, out of which 16 are on the software development side. This team is entrusted with the responsibility of continuously improving and upgrading existing products and adding new products. Job Search at Naukri.com 73 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Naukri.com has 10 servers in a server farm in the United States. The technology team in India manages those servers. The Web site is served from the servers in the United States. The head office has about 250–300 personal computers, which are used for daily operations. The operating system used is Linux, the Web servers used are Apache, the RDBMS software used is MySQL, and the programming language employed is PHP. According to Sanjeev Bikhchandani, not much data mining is done at Naukri.com. Product and Service Pricing Strategy The basic strategy of Naukri.com is to be present at every price point in the market—right from Rs 500 to Rs 9 lacs. Presence at all the price points enables Naukri.com to service low-budget customers, and at the same time, have high- end customers. The low-priced services are there to basically enable penetra- tion. To quote Sanjeev Bikhchandani, “Essentially our old strategy is penetra- tion—to make the medium popular.” There is also grading in the price charged within a product. For example, for one of the products, RESDEX, the price can range anywhere between Rs 15,000 and Rs 1.5 lacs, depending on how many logins the customer wants, and whether the customer wants it for 1 month, 3 months, or 1 year. Similarly, there are a number of other pricing options available. Consumer Segments The key segments in a B2B sense that Naukri.com serves are recruitment consultants and corporates. Within the placement consultant segment, it was found that consultants catering to different industries are different from each other in terms of their recruitment solution requirements. For instance, place- ment consultants serving the IT sector would be quite different from the other placement consultants. Within the corporate segment, the segmentation is by the verticals, that is, by the industry type. Segmentation is also done according to the size of the companies. In some cases, segmentation is also done geographically. Naukri.com serves all these segments and is a leader in all the segments. Naukri.com has been able to achieve a position of leadership in all these segments primarily because of the fact that it was the first mover in the online recruitment market. “I think one of the best-kept secrets of most market leaders is being the first mover. The fact that we moved three years before anybody else really helped us because we understood the customer, we understood the recruiter, we understood the medium, we understood the technology that has to work in order to make money,” informs Sanjeev Bikhchandani. Also, because 74 Swami Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Naukri.com’s knowledge of the Indian customer went a long way in contributing to the overwhelming success of Naukri.com, Bikhchandani believes that foreign companies had to adapt their pricing strategy and their business model and there they floundered. Competition Naukri.com’s two closest competitors are Jobstreet.com and JobsAhead.com in the Indian market. However, some big multinational competitors, such as Monster.com, have also set up their Indian operations, namely, Monsterindia.com. The screens shots of the Web sites of various competitors are provided in Appendix 2. The details of these Web sites are presented in the following. Jobstreet.com Launched in 1995, JobStreet.com has also grown rapidly to become one of the leading Internet recruitment Web sites in the Asia-Pacific. JobStreet.com offers a comprehensive suite of interactive recruitment services. International and local Asian corporations recruit from JobStreet.com’s pool of talent and manage their recruitment process through uniquely developed software applications via the Internet. The Web site has 2.5 million users and has country-specific Web sites for Singapore, Malaysia, India, and the Philippines. It has the following products and services on offer: a. Online Job Posting • Employers can post jobs at their India site • E-mail notification to suitable candidates through automated job alerts • Browsing candidates are able to apply online immediately to posted job advertisements • SiVA (JobStreet’s online recruitment management system) Résumé Management Application to zero-in on the right candidate b. JobStreet SELECT • Screen applications and conduct first round interviews c. JobStreet IMPACT • Employer career Web site management Job Search at Naukri.com 75 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. • Access to candidate database • Integrate all candidate data in SiVA to the company’s HR system d. Other Services • Online testing – Employers can evaluate applicants with customizable online tests • Targeted banners • Newsprint ads – Candidates apply online to employers’ newsprint ads and process them with SiVA In addition to the above-mentioned products, JobStreet also has secondary sources of revenue, such as the facility given to clients to advertise on their Web site. JobsAhead.com JobsAhead has a team of over 125 personnel spread across eight metropolitan cities in India. It has the unique distinction of powering the job section of India’s largest horizontal portals such as Yahoo!. Recently, in May 2004, U.S based global leader in online jobs, Monster Worldwide Inc., announced that it has acquired JobsAhead.com for consideration of Rs 40 crores. 5 The Web site receives around 5.5 million unique visitors every month and has 2.7 million résumés posted on it. It has close to 5,000 corporates as its clients. The deal involved acquisition of a company named Webneuron Services, which runs JobsAhead.com. JobsAhead.com was among early entrants in India’s e- recruitment space, where it competes primarily with Naukri.com. “India is an important and strategic market with vast pool of skilled manpower. We set eyes on India as it has one of fastest growing recruitment markets,” says Stuart McKelvey, Monster Worldwide Group president (Asia-Pacific). The original promoters of JobsAhead.com, which include Chairman Puneet Dalmia and Vice Chairman Alok Mittal, will continue to play their respective roles in the new entity. They will benefit monetarily from acquisition besides venture capitalist ChrysCapital, which invested around Rs 25 crore in the company. Prior to the merger with Monster, JobsAhead.com offered the following products/services to job seekers: a. Right Résumé: Résumé writing service b. Résumé Blaster: Sends résumés of job seekers to placement consultants all over the country and to the Middle East (for an extra fee) 76 Swami Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. c. Résumé Highlighter: Highlights the posted résumé of job seeker so that it may easily catch the attention of the recruiter/placement consultant d. Placement Directory: Complete directory of top placement consultants across India and abroad e. Career Booster: A package providing all the services listed above For employers, JobsAhead offers the following products/services: a. Database Access: Paid access to the database of job seekers. b. Job Listings: Employers can advertise their jobs on JobsAhead and let their jobs viewed by over one million job seekers c. Stingers: Employers’ jobs can be directly delivered into job seekers’ mail boxes or the job seeker can be called for a walk-in interview This online job company has also been the only player globally to develop role-based matching techniques (MarksMan), which in conjunction with text- based résumé search (TextStar), has significantly improved customer experience. MarksMan allows corporates to search for candidates by their current job role or designation. It defines the job requirement in a single phrase thereby reducing the cumbersome filling of search forms. A single click search, MarksMan classifies the recruitment market into 23 categories and 600 roles that users can easily understand. Users can further refine their search based on industry, experience, location, and key skills. TextStar works for the employers’ company by allowing the user to perform a search on all contents of a candidate’s résumé. This tool is similar to Google in its functionality. JobsAhead claims that the use of this tool makes any recruitment effort “100% more accurate.” Monsterindia.com Monsterindia.com is a flagship brand of Monster Worldwide (NASDAQ: MNST), which is a leading online global careers network and hiring management resource. It was founded in 1994 by Chief Monster, Jeff Taylor, and at present, has sites in 20 countries around the world. As part of its India strategy, Monster Worldwide Inc, the parent of job site Monster.com, has bought Indian Web site JobsAhead.com as a part of a global acquisition drive to boost revenues. 6 The deal, worth about Rs 400 million ($9.6 million), is Monster’s fourth acquisition in less than 3 months and is the first Job Search at Naukri.com 77 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. buyout in India, which is Asia’s third-largest economy and home to booming software and telecom industries. JobsAhead.com, which focuses on IT and BPO recruitment, will now be fully owned by Monster India. Monster Asia President and Managing Director Arun Tadanki said that the combined entity will have close to 3,500 clients from across the industry and companies of various sizes. “The new entity will also have data base of 25 lacs job applications and unduplicated traffic of 55 lacs job seekers, which is twice as large as our nearest competitor,” with an obvious reference to Naukri.com. It offers products/services to three consumer segments: (1) job seekers, (2) employers, and (3) movers. Job seekers can search for jobs, build and post their résumés, and access a number of pages of career information and advice. It also offers regular e-recruitment facilities, such as résumé registration and e-mail alerts. Job seekers can also use the Monster site as a networking platform. The products for employers include searching candidates in Monster’s Résumé Database tool, building the company’s own private candidate database with the tool Career Site Hosting, leveraging the company’s brand by letting candidates learn more about the company with the tool Employer Profiles, and streamlining the hiring process with the Hiring Tools, Applicant Tracking, and Candidate Screening products. In addition, Monster also provides unique solutions to the large workforce moving from one location to another. To this segment, it offers services such as finding a local real estate agent, getting instant mortgage rates, and planning the move within a short period of time. These services are provided on Monstermoving.com, positioned as “Your One-Stop Moving Resource.” Comparison of Competitors The business models of the competitors are largely similar to each other’s. Except for the moving services offered by Monster.com, all of the models involve a mixture of services for both employers and job seekers. Job seekers are usually allowed free posting of résumés and employers are charged to access the database. There was considerable confusion as to which company was the market leader in online jobs marketspace in India. According to some estimates, JobsAhead.com has a 40% share of the online jobs market, while monster.com has another 25%. “Together, we will be almost twice as large as the next player [Naukri.com],” Dalmia of JobsAhead.com added. 7 According to comScore MediaMetrix, which is an international company that independently tracks traffic on the Internet, Monster and JobsAhead together received 55 lacs unduplicated (i.e., unique) visitors in April 2004 compared with 26 lacs for the nearest competitor. Despite the recent merger of its two competitors, JobsAhead.com and Monster, Naukri.com said it was well poised to achieve 100% sales growth in the current fiscal over [...]... Business Today called “Jobs Today.” But in that venture, too, according to the marketing manager of Naukri.com, Business Today stood on its own strength and Naukri.com stood on its own strength The section “Jobs Today” no longer appears in Business Today as it has been discontinued Innovative Mailing Instead of sending out plain brochures to corporate clients, the marketing team at Naukri.com has an innovative... design of user interfaces that includes continuous and early focus on the consumer’s tasks and goals UCD emerged from researchers and practitioners of HCI HCI is an interdisciplinary field made up of researchers from numerous fields including psychology, cognitive science, engineering, and information systems HCI researchers and practitioners are focused on creating more usable systems by ensuring that technology... is in constant touch with its clients The sales team brings back feedback on a daily basis This forms the major source of intelligence and is one of the main inputs that go into new product development The needs Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc is prohibited Job Search at Naukri.com 81 of HR managers in. .. noodles) Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc is prohibited 86 Swami Appendix 2 Screen Shots of Different Web Sites Referred to in the Chapter Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc is prohibited Job Search at Naukri.com... thoroughly to determine the features that may be incorporated into the new product Other modes of intelligence gathering include looking at competitors’ Web sites and products, and analyzing what the market is demanding This is then followed by discussion with the technology team They determine the best way in which the new product may be deployed over the Internet Other departments such as finance and operations... reduced errors by making the interface more straightforward; (3) reduced training and support; (4) improved acceptance by users who prefer a system that is easy to use; and (5) enhanced reputation in the marketplace Furthermore, by taking users into account when Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc is prohibited... Yahoo! The objectives of online advertising are similar to that of television and print advertising—drive CV registration But promotion over television and print has the additional objective of branding, which is not there in Internet advertising Positioning of Naukri.com The services of Naukri.com are positioned in a different fashion for job seekers and employers The positioning for employers is end-to-end... arrived at by taking into consideration a number of factors such as what needs to be done in north, south, east, or west India, which media to use for advertising, and so on Also, the company is now looking at advertising as more of an investment rather than an expense Sanjeev Bikhchandani is of the opinion that a service should be advertised only if advertising is producing results According to him, Naukri.com... value online, this chapter integrates theory and research from Human–Computer Interaction (HCI), marketing, and psychology I begin by reviewing the principles of user-centered design (UCD) and highlighting the commonalities between UCD and consumer behavior (CB) Second, I review a variety of value-related concepts and perspectives from the marketing and HCI literature in order to propose a definition... advantage of advertising.” Now that the market is booming, management at Naukri.com believes that this is the right time to advertise Therefore, when Naukri.com was a start-up, focus was on development of business, growing products, and increasing product offerings Once venture capital funding was taken, a conscious decision was taken to shift focus to grow business, invest in infrastructure, develop . responsibility of continuously improving and upgrading existing products and adding new products. Job Search at Naukri.com 73 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic. targeting sales of between Rs 40 0 million and Rs 45 0 million over sales of Rs 220 million in 2003– 04. ” 8 Marketing Strategy of Naukri.com Initial Marketing Strategy (1997–2000) The initial marketing. been discontinued. Innovative Mailing Instead of sending out plain brochures to corporate clients, the marketing team at Naukri.com has an innovative theme-based direct mailing. For instance, it created