Dialling it Right

Searching for commercial services has come a long way. In the olden days, we used to refer to the Yellow Pages. You needed to wait for the commercial directory to arrive by turn and could not have more than one. The younger generation today may not have seen Yellow Pages; they just search for things on their mobiles. Just Dial started operations as a fixed-line voice search provider. Today users can access its services on their PCs, on mobiles, through live operator-assisted calls and by text messaging. Just Dial's popular too. It ranks 31st in an all-India ranking of Alexa's top-visited sites. Strengths There are a number of online search service providers like AskMe, AskLaila and Zomato, but none have the close to 15 million listings that Just Dial boasts of. None have a database of more than 2,000 cities like Just Dial. None have the 21.92 million searches per month on the mobile platform or the 59 million web searches on the PC. Today there are a number of technology-based companies operating in the country. On the top is the cream - companies like Flipkart and Snapdeal that get hundreds of crores of funding from private equity investors. Then there are startups launching themselves every day. Unlike Just Dial, however, most of them have not seen any profits so far. Rocketing into the big league: What propelled Just Dial into a different league was the company's decision to offer internet-based services, seven years ago. The results speak for themselves. The company saw 80 mi

This article was originally published on June 03, 2015.