Web 1.0 Bets Big On Offline
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Traditional Web Companies or for the use of a more cliched term Web 1.0 companies like jobs, matrimony and travel in India have become the big boys of the web in the last three years with many of them raking in funding close to tens of millions and one of them reaching valuation worth billions in the stock market IPO. Also many of them are lining up to have their own IPO’s soon.
So where is all this money going to be pumped in? Online? Nope its Offline. Web 1.0 companies like Naukri, Consim Info (Bharatmatrimony), People Interactive (Shaadi Group) and TimesJobs are all spending millions on offline events like job fairs, matrimony centres and other such initiatives. I guess the limited size of the web users has got to do something with it also that all these businesses are transactional in nature there by requiring other modes of payment like cheque, draft and cash as well.
Even travel sites are looking aggressively at the offline mode. Cleartrip as we blogged earlier raised more money than required and would be using the same to go offline and open a chain of offline travel offices. Also its not without good reason this is happening. Take for example timesjobs which recently held its job fair Big Leap Pharma Job Fair at Mumbai which witnessed 7,028 walk-ins. Also upcoming this month there are two property portals Makaan.com and Magicbricks.com which are having property fairs in Pune and Goa respectively. Also jobsites like clickjobs are looking at overseas fairs as well.
I expect travel companies to follow a similar trend with travel offices and events in the offline world as India’s credit card and online penetration is still below a sizeable scale.
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Dunno why suddenly you decided to call them “1.0″
Coz they aren’t 2.0 ;).. And as mentioned its used as a cliched term