CAT is the annual aptitude test conducted by the IIM’s for admission to their prestigious post graduate programs in Management. A whole lot of other institutes such as MDI, SP Jain, MICA etc use the CAT score as a parameter for admissions to their respective courses. The Symbiosis group similarly conducts SNAP and the Xavier’s group the XAT.
There are also state level competitive entrance exams.

Well this brings us to the point – How big is the MBA market?
CAT 2006 (Conducted in November, 2006) was taken by approximately 1,92,000 students. CAT 2005 was taken by approximately 1,48,000 students.

Economic Times came up with a figure in one of their articles that 56% of the students who took the CAT in 2006 had at least some work experience.

There’s certainly a craze for an MBA these days. Every Tom, Dick and Harry or should I say Ram, Shyam and Bihari (No offense intended of course) – is out for an MBA. Average salary drawn by an MBA graduate exceeds that of almost all other fields. What people don’t realize is that average is a very skewed word.

Anyways, back to the point – one can assume the MBA aspirant market to be at around 3,00,000 students. Approximately 1,500 or so students make it to the prestigious IIM’s and at least 30,000-50,000 of the others end up doing an MBA some place or the other. There’s absolutely no shortage of institutes and there is definitely a huge dearth of quality institutes. There’s an MBA college in Pune (Which is considered as the Oxford of the East) in almost every street!

So how sound is a business model revolving around MBA aspirants? Definitely sound if you were to ask IMS, Career Launcher, Career Forum etc..
But how sound is an Online Business model revolving around these aspirants?

Let us go through some websites in India who cater to this niche:
(NOTE: Sites reviewed are in no particular order. I.E. they are not listed according to popularity, traffic, content etc)

PaGaLGuY.com
WATBlog covered PaGaLGuY.com back in August.
At that time they had 77,000 registered members which has now grown to 1,15,000 members.
This is a great example of a website which symbolizes User Generated Content and the figures displayed on the main page are, in excess of 20,000 discussions and nearly 7,50,000 posts!
PaGaLGuY.com has a face similar to that of a news website – where they put up articles and interviews relevant to the MBA industry. Recent interviewees include Avnish Bajaj, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw and even Philip Kotler

The other part of the website is the popular forum where users discuss almost everything under the management sun.
Started off: 2002
Revenue Model: Advertising
List of advertisers which they have up on their site include SP Jain, XLRI and Symbiosis.

Next we take a look at CoolAvenues:

They are next biggest players in this niche. Forum and User Generated Content is not as impressive as the of PaGaLGuY.com.
CoolAvenues does not display the number of registered users they have.
Decent content on their main page.
Revenue Model: Advertising

Inspired by the above 2 a lot of other websites have sprouted up recently:

ManagementParadise.com

These guys have created a niche in the already niche segment. They are mostly catering to the BBA and BMS students. A differentiating factor is that a lot of student activity is seen on the site. Both the above mentioned sites are more popular with the aspirant community.
If ManagementParadise can retain its traffic in the longer run – and BMS/BBA students are likely to do an MBA too…
Though its the content which would be king.

Current stats: 15,000+ registered members.
12,000+ discussions and nearly 50,000 posts

Revenue: Advertising (Mostly Google AdSense)
Interesting note is that they started out by giving cash to the users for being active on the site.

ManagementJuice:

Well again it’s a simple forum and I don’t see anything different.
Hardly a handful of members

TotalGadha.com:

Wow! What a name! It really hits you hard!
Pretty similar to the others – but I look the look and feel of the site. It’s started off very recently and will need to work on the content and try and get some more users.
The work of an Ex-IITian.

Revenue Model: Advertising (Google AdSense)

IIMCatWalk

It was started off by a couple of students from IIM-Ahmedabad.
I don’t see much happening on their site. But the concept is similar.
Expected something better from them

MBAUniverse.com:

Nice site. They’ve recognized the unserved channel which was quality content. Their site is content rich.
Revenue Model: Once they get massive readership – they will be able to command money from advertisers. But then again, how is massive readership possible when the maximum level you can reach out to is around 3,00,000-5,00,000 people.
Currently they got some Google Ads running.
“While MBAUniverse.com is based in India, it strongly believes that management education is a global service.” Says their About Us page – perhaps they have international ambitions.

UrPercentile.com:

It started off as a Yahoo Group. But they have now started archiving articles on their website.
Their Yahoo Group is still pretty active and commands around 10,500 members.
“There are about 75,000 MBA aspirants visiting this website each month and the number is increasing continuously.” - says their site.

Revenue Model: Advertising

IndianMBA.com:

All I could see were ads ads and more ads and scattered amidst it was some content.
All of the content is mashed up into one page which goes on and on and on.
As a first time user I’d pretty much be lost here.

Revenue Model: Advertising (Google AdSense)

SolidGyan.com

Online Cat Coaching. Once again they have a nice sounding name.

They have a forum which doesn’t have much activity. SolidGyan ran a ‘DI Question A Day’ service last year which got around 5000+ Subscribers.

But their primary revenue model is their Online CAT Coaching product especially targeting the Working Junta who don’t have time for Classroom coaching.

Personally I feel Online CAT Coaching can only become popular once CAT goes online. Though there are definitely lots of other online means via which one can reach out to the prospective customer and convince him about the Value For Money of such an offer

TenADay.co.in:

Started off recently by 4 IIM-Ahmedabad students.
Concept is simple – they will send you 10 questions per day to your mailbox and this will help you with your preparation.
This model can become real successful if at the back-end they provide in-depth analysis to the student about his performance.
We were privileged to meet one of the founders Vineeta Singh. She is the one who rejected a 1 Crore per annum salary offer from Deutsche Bank to be an Entrepreneur!

Obvious revenue source would be Targeted advertising unless of course they start charging the users, which would be a bad idea!

So how are the traditional Classroom coaching companies responding?

IMS, who are one the biggest players in the CAT Classroom coaching sector have tied up with Enable M to launch a mobile based preparation guide with dynamic content.
They are also planning on a social network based around education!
This sounds real interesting – Perhaps it might make a little more sense tying up with one of the Social Network players here.
No one would want only education and serious stuff in a site.

Which brings us to India’s most popular social networking site:
Orkut
There are nearly a 100 communities dedicated to CAT and cracking CAT on Orkut
The top 2 being:

All the traditional classroom coaching companies like - Time, Career Forum, Career Launcher, PT etc all have forums to promote discussions, but nothing fantastic or unique.

I wonder where the students who are pursuing their MBA are? Orkut?
It appears like students use such sites to aid them in their MBA preparation and then of course move out. A few remain to help and guide the next batch of students.
There’s tremendous scope out there, if a site can retain the traffic. Aspirant-Business School Student-Alumni etc.
Perhaps a dedicated Social Network is needed?

But what these sites have provided is an excellent medium for B-Schools to advertise on and reach out to more students.

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