Marketing Trend of Indian Web 2.0 Startups

Unlike most of Web 2.0 companies in the west where the growth is mostly organic, Indian Web 2.0 startups seems to be investing a lot in unconventional marketing. Most of Web 2.0 companies uses things like "Refer a Friend", "Import Contacts" etc which makes more sense as the people they reach mostly happens to be Internet users. But lately Indian companies are advertizing on the FM radios and Televisions. Zapak backed by Reliance has invested heavily in marketing, you can hear about Zapak on Radio, TV and they went ahead using Bollywood beauties as brand ambasdor for the product. Others advertising on radio and T.V include Bharatstudent.com, Bigadda.com. May be soon we will be hearing 'Laila 'O' Laila...' on radio which will be advertising AskLaila.com of 4 interactive ;).
On the other hand are companies like MIH India which is heavily investing money into Internet advertising. MIH which has donated money to the bloggers in the name of Great Indian blogger Hunt was at recieving end for its worst marketing model which ended up with lot of spam on Ibibo blogs. Internet users can see the Ibibo banners everywhere which shows the amount they are spending into marketing but will they be able to sustain in long run ?
India might be only country where web companies are being launched with mass advertising. This may be trouble for small startups and good news for big companies but if people like the product then it may not need marketing and will spread by word of mouth especially for web companies.

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:47 AM

    Who knows ibibo might be spending money to attract users to blogs which will be their potential costumers for other products. I think this is something similar to honey pot.

    where spammers are caught in the blogs and the rest of the community can use the other products which is spam free and the popularity of the site grows as there is huge money involved in the process.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous12:14 PM

    Hi,

    Posting an question on Linkedin prompted me to get your valuable feedback on my basic question in My Mind. So I thought there will not be any better idea than checking with my gmail contact address book members who hold senior position of responsibility like you. So please take it positively and help me in getting rite answer.

    Around 40 days back , I have launched India's First Online Portal ( beta ) www.bindaaspoll.com on virgin concept of Free Online Polling to raise the voice with hidden questions in mind that need to be vented out for the opinion of Mass.

    Idea Clicked well and today we have more than 3-4 lacs visitors visiting our portal either to Create Poll/s or to vote / comment against existing polls. Doing nothing on advertisement side, portal has received more than 15 lacs of page views. Doing nothing on Alexa ranking portal has reached to India rank of 1000 - 1500. If same rate goes bindaaspoll will be among top 100 Alexa India sites in next 45 days time. Now I would like to proceed further with its logical extensions like bindaasjokes,bindaasmovies,bindaasvideos,bindaasbol...etc

    Its non commercial portal till date. Considering the load at present and its future expansion plan ,it needs to be enhanced further with dedicated server ,full bandwidth, load balancing ,securities and with lot more technical stuff on scripting side. Over and above to this, I need to expand the development team also. This all needs capital ( some where in the range of Rs.30 to Rs. 40 lacs per month to make this portal foolproof and BIG ONE )

    With due credit to the success of the portal , shall I take www.bindaaspoll.com to advertisers for online banner advertisement and sponsorship. If you think Yes , what shall be the rate structure that this portal deserves. Does this site deserves VC to join ? Does this portal deserves business partner restricted only to this portal activities.

    Would appreciate if you please spare some of your valuable time and let me know your feedback on the same

    Again Thanx for you time to go through my request email.

    Sachin Kelkar

    CEO- i2Eye Interactive

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous7:25 PM

    Bindas Poll is a spammer.
    See spam email they send to get people to click on their ads.

    Photos Of Hansika Motwani
    From: Radhika Puri (lissa.79@rediffmail.com)
    You may not know this sender. Mark as safe | Mark as unsafe
    Sent:Sunday, May 18, 2008 1:12:30 PM
    Reply-to:Radhika Puri (happyholi08@indiatimes.com)


    Hi,

    Hansika is currently enrolled in the 12th Grade in the Indian Education System.
    Hansika Motwani is now upcoming Bollywood Actress after her her debut as a heroine in Puri Jagannadh's Telugu film.

    Click here to have a look at her " Photo Album "

    Bye bye
    Radhika
    Photo Album Link : Hansika the Innocent Beauty

    ReplyDelete
  4. I have searched quite extensively for statistics related to online advertising in India - how big is the market, who are the biggest online Indian advertisers, which portals lead the segment, what kind of advertising is popular - CPM / CPC / CPA and finally - how much is the average CPM rate for these Indian portals.
    -------------------
    williamgeorge
    Email Marketing

    ReplyDelete
  5. Another website to keep an eye on is SocialSynapse. http://www.socialsynapse.com
    It is a social portal for young Indians worldwide. They are currently accepting Beta testers for a launch later this month.

    ReplyDelete