Rediff.com's India ad revenues up 92%

The online portal is upbeat about its search and mobile services, has no immediate plans to acquire companies

Leading online portal Rediff.com announced healthy results for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2007, reaffirming the growing interest in India’s digital space. And in good news for online ad agencies, Rediff said its advertising revenues in India grew by 92 per cent over the previous fiscal (though it didn’t provide any numbers).

The largest portal in the Indian space also said its overall revenues for the fiscal increased by 53 per cent, at $28.68 million (Rs 117 crore). It registered operating profits of $5.93 million (Rs 24.50 crore), an increase of 147 per cent. Online revenues in India stood at $20.76 million (Rs 84 crore), a growth of 71 per cent over the previous fiscal. The company's net income stood at $6.99 million (Rs 28 crore) for the period, an increase of 82 per cent over the last fiscal.

Total advertisers numbered 177. The top five categories – which accounted for 61 per cent of revenues – were employment, matrimonials, finance, travel and IT products. The top 10 advertisers contributed 55 per cent to advertising revenue, up from 49 per cent in the previous fiscal.

Registered users stood at 53.6 million, up 25 per cent. The company did not share any figures on page impressions or unique users. “We are looking at a third-party audit for these figures, preferably by comScore Media Matrix,” said Joy Basu, chief financial officer of Rediff.com India, in a conference call.

Also participating in the conference call, Ajit Balakrishnan, CEO of Rediff.com India, remarked that the company was particularly upbeat about its search and mobile services. Over the past three months, Rediff diversified its search services to include vertical search for fares, images, products, jobs, ringtones, books and news. “Our fare search is a leader in this category, though job search is picking up,” he added.

On Rediff’s mobile services, Balakrishnan said, “Mobile remains an important part of our strategy. We are developing ‘web service fronts’ for mobile operators, both GSM and CDMA. Our goal continues to be to offer all our services on the mobile.” He added that ringtone search is a “big component” of Rediff’s mobile services, and that the company has 60,000 ringtones in its database.

The company is happy with the response to its Predict and Win service launched during the cricket World Cup, which let users predict match results. The platform can be adapted to any other sporting event, said Balakrishnan. Rediff is also promoting its question-and-answer product, Q&A, as a white label solution for other companies that would like to replicate the model with its technology.

Answering a question on Rediff’s cash kitty of $53.55 million, Balakrishnan said that there were no immediate plans to acquire other companies, and that the amount would be invested in strengthening its product offerings.

© 2007 agencyfaqs!