West Bengal’s Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had once upon a time hoped to bring in the big bucks by exhorting a lethargic bureaucracy to “Just Do It”. He failed.
Maybe he should have tried the phrase “Just Dial”. V.S.S Mani did, and today his dial-for-information service has revenues of Rs 91 crore. Best of all, he began the service in 1996, when the government-owned companies were the only players in telephony and it could take you years to get a telephone connection.
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JUST DIAL |
| BUSINESS: Providing listings over the phone |
| Turnover: Rs 91 crore |
| TURNING POINT: In 1996, when V.S.S. Mani impressed a sarkari babu enough to get a special number. |
| LESS-KNOWN FACT: In his tweens, when there was no cable TV, he organised a paid video show. |
| LEADERSHIP POSITION: Leader in India’s local search space, covering 240 cities. |
| BIG OPPORTUNITY SPOTTED: Who wants a paper directory? Set up a phone service! |
| TREND CAPTURING SKILL: Phones are not all — was quick to launch justdial.com. |
| INVESTMENTS FOR TOMORROW: Has raised Rs 40 crore with which it will go abroad. |
| “I guess when you dream of something and you want it desperately, things automatically fall in place” - V.S.S Mani, Founder, Just Dial |
Mani’s story began in 1987, when, as a fresh BCom graduate with aspirations of becoming a chartered accountant, he had to earn a living and began selling listings for United Database India for its yellow pages. Why a directory? he asked himself. Why not a phone number that anybody could call for free and ask for information?
Money. He needed money to fund his dream. So he worked on different ideas from 1989 to 1994, finally landing in Mumbai with Rs 50,000 in his pocket in 1995. Even then, he had to do other things—like a matrimonial magazine—to survive. By now, he was dreaming numbers. “I used to dream of numbers such as 6666, 8888, 3333 and how millions of people are using my services,” he recalls.
When he finally could focus on his dream, he had a stroke of luck: The general manager of Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd’s Kandivili exchange liked Mani’s idea so much that he promised to give him the number 888 8888. (Those were the days when MTNL was the only player and you had to wait years for a phone.)
“I do not know how it happened. I just went and met the general manager… and he assured me that the 888 number was mine. I guess when you dream of something and you want it desperately things automatically fall in place,” says Mani.
Mani applied for three phone lines by paying Rs 3,000 for each (he could not afford the Rs 15,000 required for the own-your-telephone scheme) but put the waiting time to use by sending out a team of data collectors to get names and telephone numbers of small and medium size establishments. He finally launched Just Dial in 1996 from a rented garage with borrowed furniture and rented PCs, and working capital of Rs 50,000.
Today, Just Dial is valued at an estimated Rs 500 crore and claims to have 95 per cent of the market. It has grown out of the garage: the headquarters sits in a 20,000 sq. ft office in Malad, and it has a presence across 240 cities and towns. Around 4,25,000 people use Just Dial every day, calling up or hitting its website. Just Dial replies with numbers of three million establishments across India.
Mani attributes his success to passion and hard work: “I faced a lot of challenges… It’s not that if you do not have capital you cannot do a business... My philosophy was simple: it was to see a day-to-day improvement in my business and overcome the challenges.”
Just Dial was helped by the telecom sector’s liberalisation and the mobile telephony boom. Its success drew a series of investors after the first ten years: Hong Kong’s SAIF Partners, US-based Tiger Global and most recently Sequoia.
Mani, never one to miss an emerging trend, launched justdial.com two years ago. The Website gets 1,85,000 visitors a day. Next: A long-code SMS Service at the price of normal SMS.
While callers (the new number is 6999 9999) don’t pay anything, Just Dial began earning initially from a flat fee structure and then moved to an advertising-led model in which it charged its clients a huge premium for featured positions. Today, it has a pay-per-lead model inspired by Google. Out of the three million establishments registered with Just Dial, 1,00,000 are sponsored—much of the company’s revenues come from this and through advertisements.
According to Mani, Just Dial’s EBIDTA margins are now 25 per cent. Mani expects revenues to grow to Rs 130 crore by the end of the current fiscal.
The company has also invested a great deal in technology to aid customer queries. “All our software is indigenously built from the start. Today, the entire operation is completely automated. The technology enables the query to be answered by a text message even before the caller can finish the call,” says Mani.
With the arrival of 3G technology, Mani is confident of providing information in a rich content format such as video and pictures.
