BharatMatrimony Group Rebranded As Consim Info; IPO In 2 Years
By Nikhil Pahwa - Thu 06 Dec 2007 04:53 AM PST
The BharatMatrimony Group, which runs matrimonial portal Bharatmatrimony and other classified portals like Clickjobs, Indiaproperty, Indialist, Loanwala and Indiaautomobile has announced a change of name: the group will now be called Consim Info (Consim - Consumer Services through Internet and Mobile). The group also has a host of religion based matrimonial sites - MuslimMatrimonial, SikhMatrimony, BuddistMatrimony, JainMatrimony, and ChristianMatrimony - and the change of name appears to be an attempt to position the company as more than just a matrimonial services company. I spoke to Murugavel Janakiraman, Founder and CEO of Consim on the company’s plans:
Is this a pre-IPO rebranding for the Bharatmatrimony group?
We might look at an IPO 2 years down the line, but not immediately. The rebranding reflects the company vision, and that we have gone beyond matrimony.
You’d told ContentSutra that the company would be profitable by the end of this year. Are you profitable yet?
Our plans have changed and the company wants to spend more money on strengthening the brand, particularly the matrimonial brand and going international. We will probably be profitable by the second or third quarter of next year.
How much money will you be investing in the international forray?
We haven’t firmed up those plans yet so I can’t comment on the investment. But we are targeting countries with a South Asian population - we launched a site for Indonesia and Malaysia alongwith Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) called Muslimmatrimonial. We’re also targeting the Gulf and Sri Lanka.
Where have you deployed the money ($8.6 Million) raised from Canaan Partners and Yahoo?
Around 50 percent of the money that has been deployed was used in strengthening the matrimony business, while the rest was for growing new businesses, for promoting clickjobs.com and indiaproperty.com. In terms of revenues, around 80 percent comes from the matrimony business. The jobs vertical is second.
How are your non-matrimonial verticals doing?
Indiaproperty is the leader in the online property space. We’re better in terms of the rates and services that we offer. Clickjobs is a challenge - we have to establish a brand. At this time, we have close to 2 million resumes - but beyond a point, whether you have 5 million or 50 million, it doesn’t make a difference. People don’t go beyond 2-3 pages and it’s the technology and innovation that matters. For loanwala, banks are not taking each and every lead - they want leads from a specific city and location. A bank like Citibank wants only top 10 cities, and not the rest. If a user applies for a loan, and the bank doesn’t want to offer it because of their own specifications, then the user blames us.
Posted in: Companies, Bharatmatrimony
