 "Pranay Chulet")
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Classifieds site Quikr, which last month raised $60 million from venture capital (VC) funds, is aggressively marketing the portals on various media. Pranay Chulet, founder and chief executive officer, spoke to Raghavendra Kamath on the sidelines of the 1st NYU Stern India Alumni Group Conference 2014 about the site's business and plans. Edited excerpts:
E-commerce portals Flipkart and Amazon did deep discount sales recently. How did it impact your business?
It has helped our business. If people are buying more new goods, they're coming to Quikr to sell them.
There is a criticism against e-commerce companies that they are discounting because they have VC funds. The moment funds get over, they will stop discounting. What is your take on this?
Everybody is investing in growth. Discounting will reduce. But it might not happen in a hurry because we are in a strong growth phase and a lot of capital is available. A second thing that will happen is as people grow bigger, the economies of scale will kick in. Their costs will come down in marketing, logistics and so on. That will add to their bottom line. Discounts will reduce in the longer run and companies will spend less in many areas.
Your competitor, OLX, is also aggressively marketing the business. How are you tackling the competition?
Both of us are investing aggressively in marketing. We are pretty aggressive on this and at the same time, focusing on increasing our revenues. We are a local player. So, we are launching India-specific categories such as education, entertainment and so on.
Which categories are doing exceptionally well?
In numbers of listings, real estate is the biggest. Jobs are also very big for us. In terms of revenue, too, real estate is the biggest, followed by education and services.
Are you looking to launch any new categories?
Yes. We will announce in the next two months
When do you expect to break even?
We have not broken even yet but are growing our revenues aggressively. They're four times higher than last financial year and listings have grown three times over last year. We are focusing on a lot of India-focused categories. For instance, we have launched entertainment as a category. Half of India wants to act and the others want to make movies. People can list their film projects and aspiring actors can approach the other side. We get some 100,000 listings every month.
Are you looking to raise any new funds?
We have enough capital in the company and are not looking to raise any new funds.
What are your main revenue streams?
We have three business streams - leads, premium listings and advertising. The first two account for 90 per cent of our revenues.
What are your growth plans?
We are aggressive on mobile. In fact, we are Number One on this front. We are double the size of our closest competitor on mobile. We will grow our business. I will be surprised if we have not grown 10 times of the current business in the next three years.
