Dial a better deal

Just Dial is moving beyond search into becoming your virtual assistant that can deliver anything you want

Just Dial is making small tweaks to its business model that promise to take it beyond just a being a local search engine. It is using its brand reach and recall to sign up with companies and small businesses to list their wares on its internet platform and ease visitors to the platform to conduct transactions on its website. It is tying up with merchants to provide users with options to purchase food or wine and then move on to fix doctor's appointments or purchase the next big electronic gizmo.

Says V S S Mani, founder and chief executive officer: "We are getting the consumer not only to search but to transact as well. We are going beyond search and actually telling our consumers to not just call us but also to book a table at a restaurant or order wine and food or movie tickets with just one call or by logging on to our website."

Just Dial is adding new technological capabilities to its web platform to enable customers to view various products and comparison-shop before finalising a purchase. Third-party vendors can fulfil orders the same day, wherever possible.

This is a website that will enable transactions for customers without the company having to invest in costly warehousing and product stocking. It will purely transact on behalf of different vendors that are listed with it.

It's a service that Mani is enthused about, and likely to add a further revenue stream. Avers Mani: "We can practically sell anything under the sun which has a brand. Anybody can participate. On one platform, visitors can do many things."

These new features will take some time to roll out, as the company is focusing on adding more capabilities and vendor requirements. Technology is likely to enable it to scale up faster but, given that the company will have to tie-up with various local dealers as well, enrolling is likely to take some time. Nevertheless, Just Dial has gone live with its food-and wine-ordering systems and is initially rolling them out in 20 cities.

Just Dial will add many more products such as flowers, videos and almost any other that people can utilise; even have these delivered to friends and relatives. It is also adding technology to be able to track the transaction histories of customers and recommend products and services to them. Mani says he "wants to make life easy for people, help them buy products at a cheaper rate, without them putting in too much money, as Just Dial will be a price discovery-cum-shopping product."

Whether this new service makes money has still to be seen, as the company is not talking figures. Mani is setting up an army of sales staff armed with tablets to enroll fresh vendors and customers to the new utility of Just Dial's comparison-shopping. As technology scales up, Just Dial will add categories, even allowing end-product distributors to sign up on their own.

Meanwhile, it is making strides in its bread-and-butter domestic search business. It has 220,000 paid listers and nearly 10 million listers and service providers. Its growth in the number of listings has seen 26 per cent compounded annual growth in the last three years. Payments from paid advertising is usually 100 per cent upfront, which means it does not need to borrow for working capital.

As customers conduct more searches online through the rapid rise in internet penetration, Just Dial is clearly improving operating leverage. More people searching its database means fewer back-office telecom staff required, while it costs next to nothing to service consumers. However, Just Dial is planning to add more field staff to enable more user interaction in coming months. States Mani: "We are getting operating leverage and showing better margins."

Just Dial, however, still has to demonstrate whether it can get its transaction business off the ground. Product replacement and warrantees are likely to get Just Dial into a spot of bother if it does not manage to handle its vendors just right.

Just Dial's transaction model might add another revenue stream and can bring in more paid advertisers, and still more searches. How fast it adds more channels and product categories is key to its growth.

Its stock valuation is down 15 per cent (Rs 880) from its recent peak as investors await more execution. But it's an enviable business model for now, one that will be keenly watched by investors and global biggies like Google.