mp final rediff
TRANSCRIPT
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Marketing Strategy
Of
Rediff.com
Submitted by: Group 9
Aditya Srivastava 11P065
Ankit Dubey11P067
Chetan Agarwal 11P071
Karan Kumar 11P085
Srinivas R R 11P112
Tarun Jindal 11P118
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CONTENTS
1. Executive Summary
2. About Rediff
3. Products Offered
4. Marketing Environment & Demand Trends
5. Target Customer Segment
6. Product Policy
7. Pricing Policy
8. Distribution and Promotion
9. Survey and Our Analysis
10. Conclusion
11. References
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1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The objective of this report is to analyze the marketing strategy of Rediff.com.
Rediff.com is one of the premier worldwide online providers of news, information,
communication, entertainment and shopping services. They provide original and third-party
branded content through interest-specific channels, extensive Web-based community
features such as free e-mail, chat, personal home pages and an India adapted search engine,
and the largest e-commerce platform in India.
Rediff.com provides a combination of free and paid community features and products to
consumers and businesses. These include e-mail, instant messaging, Search, Chat, Blogs,
Message Boards, Social Networking, Mobile services, online shopping and auctions. The
major products offered are Rediffmail, Rediff Bol, Rediff MoneyWiz, Rediff iLand and Rediff
Deal Ho Jaye.
Rediff is still a small player in comparison to giants such as Yahoo and Google based on
market capitalisation. Its competitors in India are Indiatimes and Web18. Based on our
survey, Rediff emerged as the leader in most of the services provided. It caters mostly to
Indians and Indians living overseas.
The core revenue of Rediff is from the advertising space on its Website. It follows both the
fixed fee and variable fee models. Other than these it offers fee based services such as
corporate email, downloads, subscriptions and commissions from sale of merchandise.
Promotion is mostly through mass media such as television, newspapers and web
promotion. Majority of the Rediff customers come through search engines, such as Yahoo,
Google, AltaVista and others. So they see to it that they are getting their site listed, making
sure that their site shows up high in the list of search results. It also relies upon word of
mouth publicity.
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2. ABOUT REDIFF.COM
Rediff.com is one of the premier worldwide online providers of news, information,
communication, entertainment and shopping services.
Known for being one of the first news providers with accurate and trustworthy information,
Rediff.com provides an ideal platform worldwide to connect with one another online fast.
Rediff.com is committed to offering a personalized and a secure surfing and shopping
environment.Rediff.com additionally offers the Indian American community one of the
oldest and largest Indian weekly newspaper, India Abroad.
Founded in 1996, Rediff.com is headquartered in Mumbai, India with offices in New Delhi
and New York, USA.Rediff.com is the leading online network targeting India and Indiansworldwide. They provide original and third-party branded content through interest-specific
channels, extensive Web-based community features such as free e-mail, chat, personal
home pages and an India adapted search engine, and the largest e-commerce platform in
India.
They have designed their Web-site offerings by keeping the slow access speed available to
most Indian Internet users in mind. Rediff believes that it has created the online network of
choice for Indian Internet users, as well as created a highly desirable advertising and e-
commerce platform for advertisers and merchants respectively.
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3. PRODUCTS OFFERED
A key focus for Rediff.com is using world-class technology to drive community building.
Through a single login facility, Rediff.com provides a combination of free and paid
community features and products to consumers and businesses. These include e-mail,
instant messaging, Search, Chat, Blogs, Message Boards, Social Networking, Mobile services,
online shopping and auctions.
Rediffmail is the flagship product of Rediff.com. It is one of the most popular web
email service used by Indians worldwide. Rediffmail offers users a complete outlook
desktop experience with features like unlimited storage, instant mail preview, quick
attachments of up to 10 MB, Drag & Drop facility to manage your folders and auto
address completion. It supports eleven Indian languages and also comes with the
integrated web-messenger allowing all Rediffmail users to chat in real-time with all
their Rediff Bol (Instant Messenger) users within their inbox.
Rediff Web Search provides a comprehensive directory of information adapted to
provide relevant search results.
Fare Search is the Rediff’s first vertical search product that allows users to search
and compare airfares across domestic carriers for all destinations served. The Fare
search is also extended to include Train Search which allows users to find trains,
check ticket availability, PNR status. The product also gives you comparison view of
trains available between two stations and the lowest airfare ticket available between
the same routes.
Job Search is vertical search product which allows users to search for jobs across
various job sites in India under several categories and locations in India.
Image Search is one of the popular search services offered by Rediff.com. Users can
search from over 1 billion images share the images with their friends from the
system itself.
Rediff Product Search allows users to compare products across brands, features,
price points, user ratings and check availability of the products in their city at local
stores with complete contact details. The service covers more than 16 product
categories under electronics and also covers Cars and Bikes as new categories.
Rediff iShare is a rich multimedia social content sharing platform which allows users
to share videos, music, pictures all on a single platform
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Rediff Moneywiz provides stock market quotes, analyses and market voices, a live
running commentary updated every few minutes. It also provides facility of personal
portfolio tracker to users.
Rediff Pay4Clicks Classifieds is the Company’s performance based advertisingplatform. Users can send their responses directly to the advertiser over email or to
the mobile phone using SMS. We have also integrated our reseller channel to this
platform and provided them with a tool that allows them to upload multiple ads in a
single user session.
Rediff Q & A is social media community platform which allows users to ask and
answer questions posed by the Rediff community. The platform encourages
participation through recognizing the top performers of the week by featuring them
in the ‘Hall of Fame’ section.
Rediff iLand is a social networking and a blogging platform that empowers users to
share and express their views and form a community of like minded users. The
platform supports eight Indian languages like Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu,
Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali and Gujarati, allowing users to blog in the language
they are most comfortable in.
Rediff Bol instant messenger is a free service that works even on low bandwidths.
Users can make PC-to-PC voice phone calls; send SMS to mobile phones in India and
create customized avatars and participate in chat rooms.
Rediff News - Information and content channels currently include news, business,
movies, cricket/sports and several other topics of interest. News content includes:
Current affairs and breaking news: Rediff provides breaking news focused on
events of interest to Indians, including feature news stories, interviews and
online chats with leading Indian personalities.
Business: This channel covers the happenings of corporate India, stock market
quotes and analysis, regular columns and feature stories, as well as personal
portfolio tracker.
Movies and Entertainment: For latest news and trends from Bollywood
and Hollywood. Box office information, regular columns, feature stories,
interviews with movie personalities, movie reviews and slide shows.
Sports and Cricket: Provides coverage of Indian and global sporting news. There
is in-depth coverage of cricket news from India and around the globe, with
statistics, scores and schedules, regular columns, feature stories and interviews.
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Get Ahead: Aimed at enriching the lifestyle of younger online audiences, this
section cover topics of interest such as careers, education, relationships, work
environments, among others.
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4. MARKETING ENVIRONMENT & DEMAND TRENDS
With 5 journalists, 3 technologists, and 2 designers, Rediff set up India's first web-server
from its 800 sq. ft office in Mumbai's Fort area. Initially Rediff posted a news magazine and
the site reported 1 mn hits in the first month. Most of the hits were from the US, from the
first-generation Non-Resident Indians (NRIs). Balakrishnan then re-positioned the site as an
access-point for all India-related information. Chat services were introduced in early 1996.
The early-mover advantage seemed to have worked in Rediff's favour. Apart from The
Hindu's online services, Rediff was the only source of Indian news on the Net in 1996. Rediff
then looked out for companies interested in advertising to an NRI audience. Hindustan Lever
and Ranbaxy accepted the offer.
Since these companies did not have websites to start with, Rediff got into site-building.
Once again, the first-mover advantage helped Rediff. By the late 1990s, Rediff had built
about 70% of the Indian sites. Rediff unfolded its e-commerce strategy in early 1998, when
it became clear that e-commerce would soon be available to Indian consumers. On August
15, 1998, Rediff launched a bookshop, music shop, and on-line hotel-reservations, backing it
up with free e-mail and homepages. In May 2000, Rediff and Orange (Mumbai's leading
cellular service provider) announced a strategic alliance to launch the wireless applications
protocol (WAP) service. This enabled people to browse the Internet using mobile phones.
Orange customers could access Rediff content on their mobile handsets.
Rediff’s marketing strategies have been based on blending content and applications. It has a
34% reach and is continuously evolving social media features. Rediff is already a leader in
key growth categories. It has a clean balance sheet with $35.8m in cash. The major factors
that have contributed to the success of Rediff are it being a respected and a trusted brand.
Also the commitment it has shown towards innovation during the years has taken it a long
way.
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Source: Rediff Investor Report
Recently, India has seen an exponential rise in the number of broadband users. This factor
will directly affect the number of market for online portals in India and has to be analysed in
an elaborated manner. The number of user has increased from 10m to 100m over the years.
The major drivers behind the Broadband growth in India have been-
Reach
Affordability
Content
Access Devices
A brief comparison of Rediff with respect to the industry leaders is given below. From the
table, we can see that Rediff is a mid size player in terms of market capitalization and
revenue growth. However, in terms of Long term growth rate it is a leading player.
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The table given below compares Rediff with its competitors in terms of unique visitors,
reach, pageviews, and average time spent on the site.The average time spent on Rediff is
higher than in.com, msn.com,indiatimes and Yahoo which have a similar product bouquet.
The number of unique visitors is 92% higher than Indiatimes which is its major competitor.
The emergence of 3G and Broadband services has resulted into the game changer. Below is
the graph of increase in customers with the advancement of technology in the chronological
order.
Source: Rediff Investor Report
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5. TARGET CUSTOMERS SEGMENT
1. Focus on India & Indians Worldwide: They serve the online needs for Indian Internet
users and people of Indian origin worldwide and have developed their product
offerings based on the demands and the requirements of their user base. They have
been in business since 1996, and hence have a large archive of Indian focused
content. Rediff provides their users with:
• Broad range of community offerings such as, chat, singles channel and personal
homepages that allows users to interact with other Indians with similar interests
• Search engine, with technology from Inktomi, that has been customized to provide
India relevant content as top searches for queries by users
o Channels those are relevant to Indian interest, e g Horoscope, Cricket,
Singles, Indian finance, Indian music and Indian movies
o Up-to-date news focused on India, constantly updated by their in-house
editorial staff, featuring interviews with several leading Indian politicians,
movie stars, and celebrities
o Airline and train schedule and availability, thereby eliminating the need for
Indian users to queue up in airport and train stations.
o An easy to understand interface that strikes the right balance between an
attractive visual appearance and fast down-load times for people accessing
the site with low speed modems.
2. Comprehensive online offering: Rediff believes that it is "one-stop-shop" for Indian
Internet users by satisfying all their online requirements. By providing them with locally
relevant content, community functionality, and ability to shop online, it has been able to
attract and retain users on its site for extended periods. They believe that their extensiveofferings coupled with their aggressive branding program have made them the most
recognized Internet brand in India. To help advertisers reach the Rediff audiences, they help
them build their sites, design their banners and sponsorships and lead them through a
comprehensive service to assist their marketing efforts on the net.
3. Leading e-commerce platform: Rediff has created the Rediff Marketplace which provides
Indian merchants a guide and effective way to move from being merely
advertisers/sponsors on their site to selling their goods and services online.
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To demonstrate the value of this proposition they created a Rediff Book Store and Music
Store online and the initial positive results from them has allowed them to sign up more
merchants.
Till date they have put online several dozen merchants in India and are now completing
development of software that will allow merchants to automatically sign-up, create their
own store and transact business on the web.
On the other hand they have created the necessary facilities to allow their site visitors to
easily search and provide the right goods and services in the Rediff Marketplace.
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6. PRODUCT POLICY
Online users expect certain things from the service provider i.e. easy to use and trouble free
procedures like while creating a new Rediffmail account, the information asked by Rediff to
the online user is very specific and up to the point. According to them trust is an ongoing
job, at no point can they afford to lose a valuable customer.
On its website they have got a Rediff Marketplace option wherein a customer can buy the
products online. Rediff has got this system whereby if a customer after shopping is not
satisfied with the product purchased from Rediff, they can return the goods back to Rediff
even if they have used the product. Rohit Varma, Chief Marketing Officer said that it is these
small things that one has to take into consideration and which can create a sense of trust in
the minds of the customers.
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7. PRICING POLICY
Rediff has noted intense competition in the nascent but highly promising Indian Internet
market. It is responding with an expanded range of video, train fare, regional language
content, job, car and other search offerings – and currently trails only Google and Yahoo! in
the search category; the popular iShare video platform, whose media partners include
leading video/audio entertainment providers; and leadership in the Personal Finance
segment (more unique visitors than Yahoo! Finance and Moneycontrol, an affiliate of CNBC).
Calibrated upfront bandwidth/marketing investments should be rewarded, over time, with
rising ad revenue from a strengthened online platform.
Business Model: Rediff generates core revenue from the sale of advertising space on its
www.rediff.com site. Online advertisements comprise banners, links and eventsponsorships. The company targets India’s top-200 corporate advertisers across key
consumer categories through 100 sales and marketing professionals. Clients include
Citibank, Hewlett Packard, Hindustan Lever, ICICI, Microsoft, Monster, Naukri.com, Pepsi,
Shaadi.com and others. Rediff charges a fixed fee for a given time period or guaranteed
number of impressions (CPM model); or a variable fee based on click-throughs which is
suitable for SME clients with limited ad budgets.
Consumer offerings consist of e-mail (in 11 Indian languages), news, search and an online
marketplace. Through an editorial staff, contract journalists and syndication/aggregation
from multiple sources, Rediff.com provides content on popular subjects: news, business and
personal finance, movies, sports, health, food, books, games, astrology, contests, lifestyle,
etc. Fee-based services include e-mail; wireless messaging (revenue is shared with major
operators) and ring-tone/game downloads; matchmaking and astrology subscriptions; and
commissions from independent electronics, apparel, jewellery, flower and other merchants.
The U.S. publishing business (non-core) includes a weekly newspaper catering to the Indian
community. Rediff derives revenue from classified advertisements and subscriptions.
To summarise we can conclude that the core revenue from the sale of advertising space on
its website and they follow two types of revenue model
Fixed fee
CPM Model - guaranteed number of impressions
Fixed fee for a given time period
Example – Banner : 7K, Button : 5K
Variable fee – Performance Based
Price per click model
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8. PROMOTION AND DISTRIBUTION
Outperforming the previous dominant players, Yahoo and MSN, it is India’s leading online
community portal, providing news, information, communication, entertainment, free & paid
community features & products, including e-commerce and mobile services. In 2001Rediff.com listed on NASDAQ (NASDAQ: REDF) & in a recent study conducted by Business
Week the company appeared in the Top 10 Indian Companies to watch. The Chairman and
CEO, Mr. Balakrishnan is a well established name in the Indian online industry and is highly
regarded for his vision and experience.
Rediff generally believes advertising in mass media like Television, Newspaper etc.
Apart from these general means of advertising it also believes in promoting the site through
web promotion. The best e-commerce site in the world is worthless if no one can find it.
But, too often, ecommerce start-ups use shotgun marketing, simply advertising everywhere,to everyone, in the hope that a fraction of a percent of those who see the ads will respond.
Majority of the Rediff customers come through search engines, such as Yahoo, Google,
AltaVista and others. So they see to it that they are getting their site listed, making sure that
their site shows up high in the list of search results and ensuring that their site is listed for
specific keywords which is a science in itself.
Rediff also believes in Word of Mouth policy, an offline strategy. This can be done only if
they provide innovative products and services to its customers and to see that what the
made by them is being fulfilled, more the number of people visiting their site more is the
awareness made by them to other people.
For example Rediff offers ‘Rediff Blogs’, a service that allows users to publish their thoughts
and ideas directly on the web. Rediff.com is the first Indian website to offer Blogs to Indians
worldwide using the latest in the internet technologies.
A Rediff Blog enables the user to express his opinions, be heard and make friends on
Rediff.com. The process of setting up and updating a blog is very simple. All a user needs is a
Rediff.com account. Thereafter a blog can be set up in three simple steps, starting with
entering a subject, choosing a template and making an entry into the blog.
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9. OVERVIEW OF MARKETING STARTEGY
Communication Objectives
Strengthen & reinforce the Rediff.com brand, positioning them as a creative & highlyinteractive community portal across the metros & other cities
Identify and promote key services - create awareness amongst the younger
generation for Rediff’s additional services
Communicate Rediff’s progress in India, establish as a success story in online
industry and project Rediff.com as a trend-setter
Strategy and Key Initiatives
Rediff.com Re-Launch Campaign 2009
Rediff.com has undergone a complete makeover, re-positioning itself against some
of the key players
The new website has been launched
Rediff.com has been positioned between Google.com and Yahoo.com
Rediff.com has cleared its cluttered website image and moved to a simple, iconic and
user friendly web portal
GRI to initiate a 360 degree PR campaign leveraging print, online, electronic and
bloggers
Target Customers
Users - Rediff.com: 15-45 years, core audience: 15-24 years
Media
Beat journalists across mainlines, language, regionals, television,, wires, online and
magazines Editors & Chief-of-bureaus across key metros
Reviewers & columnists across metros
Feature journalists
International media based out of India
Bloggers and social media consultants
Trade media – both online & print
International media based out of India
Genre – media (ex: agency faqs, exchange4media, brand reporters)
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Consumer Technology – Digit, Chip, Techtree, Tech2
Advertising media
Advertisers
Brand/marketing Managers (current as well as prospective)
Media planners
Ongoing Basis: Corporate PR
Media interviews for spokesperson
Tech publications
Financial Dailies
Mainline Dailies
Consumer Tech portals
Build spokesperson as key opinion maker in online industry
Chairman & CEO, Mr. Balakrishnan as an authority on online industry
Media Interactions
Participation at key industry events - Conference on Cyber Security organised by
Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI)
Product PR
Launch of applications, features and services
BusFare search
MobileRediff application
Rediff LocalAds
Rediff Moneywiz Share Bazaar game
India Votes 2009
Healthy Hoga Hindustan initiative
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All India launch in city of business concentration
Product reviews
Highlight Rediff online shopping during Festive seasons. e.g. Diwali bumper offers on Rediff
Outcome
Have captured a majority share in online shopping industry
Is perceived to have changed the face of Indian online industry
Heightened visibility to Rediff.com with increase in the number of users
Rediff.com is regarded as one of the top 10 web portals in India
Mr. Balakrishnan is perceived as an authority in the industry and is looked upon with
high regard
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10. Survey and Analysis:
To cross-check the penetration of the marketing strategy followed by the Rediff in its
customer base, we conducted a survey.
1. Which amongst the three is your preferred choice as a homepage?
A. Rediff (45%)
B. Web18 (32%)
C. Indiatimes (13%)
2. Which amongst the following would you prefer to get the latest news updates?
A. Indiatimes (78%)
B. Rediff (10%)
C. Web18 (12%)
3. Which amongst the following you find the most user friendly as an e-mail service?
A. Indiatimes (17%)
B. Rediff (61%)
C. Web18 (22%)
4. Which amongst the following is your preferred site for social networking?
A. Rediff (33%)
B. Indiatimes (42%)
C. Web18 (25%)
Analysis:
We have seen several internet wars in the past:
1. Netscape Vs Internet Explorer
2. MSN Vs Yahoo Vs Google
3. Facebook Vs My Space
4. Google Vs Bing
5. Facebook Vs Google [Which still continues]
But they all were in USA and we have never seen this to happen in India till now.
Indiatimes getting more unique visitors than Rediff and Web18shows that a new war will
start soon. Actually this all happens because of report of Comscore showing Indiatimes
over Rediff and Web18 in unique visitors and Web18 over Indiatimes and Rediff in terms
of traffic.
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Let’s see on what front can they fight and who will emerge winner:
1. NEWS: News is the most important service given by them. Indiatimes has an
advantage that they have the leading newspaper Times Of India, Economic Times and
Financial Times so people will prefer reading its online news. Web18 has leading newsnetwork with CNBC and IBN so they may also lead over Rediff. Rediff has the advantage
that it’s famous in US so it will be preferred in US. Our ranking:
Indiatimes>Web18>Rediff.
2. Mail: Rediff is quite famous and their Rediffmail NG has proved to be one of the best
mail services on Mobile at Rs 50. In.com Mail is also good enough and people will like it
after they use but it needs to gain market. In.com Mail has done quite an advertising so
maybe it can grow. Indiatimes Mail is below standard and even they pay no attention to
it. Our ranking: Rediff>Web18>Indiatimes.
3. Search: Rediff is light so a preferred home page of many and will go under a search
deal. While other two: Web18 and Indiatimes, have a partnership with Google. Our
ranking: Rediff>Web18>Indiatimes.
4. Social: Rediff has “My Page” which needs revamp. Indiatimes has Itimes which has
integrated mail service but lacks chat. Web18 has no presence in this area. Our ranking:
Indiatimes>Rediff>Web18.
According to us, it’s going to be tough fight among them and Rediff seems to be
emerging as a winner.
Our Ranking:
1. Rediff (which may be Google of India)
2. Indiatimes (which may be MSN of India)
3. Web18 (Which may be Yahoo of India)
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11. References
Links:
http://investor.rediff.com/
http://kwebmarketing.com/articles/rediff-PPC-in-India.htm
http://www.ontargetmarketing.in/integrated-marketing/rediff-marketing.html
Books:
Marketing Management by Kotler, Keller, Koshy and Jha