Business Model Naukri.com is an entrepreneurial firm that has pioneered online recruitment and job search in India.

The sources of revenue of Naukri.com are: y Employers who put up job advertisements to get resume-related services bring in 95% of the revenue. y Job-Seekers bring in rest of the revenue. Naukri.com acts as a facilitator between job-seekers and job-providers. From being a bootstrap startup in 1997 until the year 2000 in which it obtained venture capital funding to the tune of 80 million , revenues had doubled every year since 2000-01 and were set to reach Rs. 400 million in 2004-05 from Rs.200 million in 2003-04. One of the secrets to Naukri.com s success is its constant adaptability to suit the requirements of its customers . This is illustrated by some of the features that it provides:
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Naukri.com has a database of more than 2.5 million resumes and it offers access to this RESDEX database to job providers. In January 2005, it contributed to more than 35% of the total revenue of Naukri.com. The Website page of Naukri.com is optimally leveraged to view different product lines. Constant focus on website development to ensure easy navigation for the job seekers. Naukri.com provides a variety of products to its customers which have been priced as per the visibility offered to the client. In accordance with the feedback received from their efficient sales personnel, they also provide a bundling together of different product offerings.

It has been ably led by Sanjiv Bhagchandani at the helm of affairs and Hitesh Oberoi - the head of Sales and Marketing who spend a certain number of days every month on the field interacting with clients and ensuring that the services provided by them are optimal. Also, it had a very able technical team. The software professionals were paid 30% higher salary than the market value in order to retain them. Naukri.com entered into the online job portal and related services area when internet was in its infancy. Because it was a pioneer of its kind, Naukri.com received a lot of media attention and gained mindshare.

Salesforce and advertising On bootstrap from 1997 to 2000, salesforce was recruited after venture capital funding was received in April 2000. The ramping up of the salesforce in 2002 contibuted to an increase in business from 9.2 million in 2000-01 to 200 million in 2003-04. This growth in revenues was a byproduct of both, an increase in salesforce and an increase in the spending on advertising. In August 2004, 170 out of 280 employees were in the sales force. The Salesforce were responsible for calling HR departments of firms and obtaining their business(advertising jobs online and other related services).

Primary functions of the Salesforce:

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Business Development Pre and post sales services Relationship management

The Salesforce used features like functional advantages in RESDEX interface, ease of resume capture, advantages in speed of recruitment compared to newspapers, etc to sell to recruiters. Each Salesperson has 3 lists to work on:
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Existing clients Potential new clients Possible future clients

Naukri.com used TV advertisements on English language channels like HBO,AXN etc since November 2003. This led to an increase in the number of resumes uploaded from 2,400/day in June 2003to 7,200/day in August 2004.

In order to tackle the dilemma of whether to intensify its Salesforce or invest more on advertising, Naukri.com should judge buyer behaviour and then decide how advertising and salesforce can help the consumer make the decision.

Customers Naukri.com has a list of 15,000 clients. The two major categories of customers are job providers and job seekers. In 1997 during the bootstrap period, they generated traffic by copying newspaper job advertisements from newspapers and magazines. Then, once customers realized the value of posting job advertisements, Naukri.com started charging firms. Placement agencies were an important customer group for the firm. In the last quarter of 2004, 10 per cent of the clients were placement agencies which contributed to 60 per cent of the jobs and 30 per cent of the revenues on the naukri site. Other important customer groups were firms from IT and related areas (23% of job openings) and telecom and FMCG related firms (5% of job openings). The pricing for different categories of job listings in the website vary. Naukri.com s product pricing begins at Rs. 500 for a classified single listing. Its longer-term products like hotjobs start at Rs. 27,000 for three months. The most prominent listings on the site were panel listings on the page that cost up to Rs. 1.2 million per annum. Naukri.com has to be vary of many new competitors in this field as many corporate are having an online recruitment portal of their own. TimesJobs.com is a prime example as deep pockets can invest in such avenues. The 5 ways of recruitment are: print media which constituted the greatest chunk, referrals, placement agencies, online advertising and corporate recruitment websites. As corporate clients realise the reachability of online advertising, reduction in the recruitment cycle and at a much lower cost per person, online advertising has grown at a much larger rate than print media has grown.

Key decision areas for customers in buying process

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Ease of resume capture

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Increase in speed of recruitment compared to newspapers Access to resume database

All these factors have contributed to the fact that today Naukri.com is the leading online recruitment portal in the country.

Suggestions Naukri.com must persevere with its efforts to improve the functionality and navigability of its site and make it easier for job seekers to use the site. This will help it to attract more CVs and improve the site s attractiveness to job providers. In order to remain ahead of its closest competitors(the combined entity of Jobsahead.com and MonsterIndia.com), Naukri.com should continue to rank high in terms of traffic parameters as measured by alexa.com. This will ensure that the value of advertising space on Naukri.com is high and it will lead to an increased revenue flow to Naukri.com. Thus, the process of value creation for customers will be sustained by offering high visibility to them. This will help counter attack the strategy of its competitors which were trying to lure its clients by offering advertising space on both Jobsahead.com and MonsterIndia.com at a 10% higher markup price. Also, Naukri.com should make concerted efforts to combat the high attrition rate as the loss of sales personnel is a loss of revenue to the company. There should be a targeted sales initiative to market its top of the range products. The current compensation and benefits offered to its sales personnel does not distinguish between existing client renewals and bringing in new clients. The incentive offered for bringing in new clients needs to be higher to encourage its salesforce to reach out to more customers. Thew higher revenue earnt will also help to compensate for the high compensation(48% of total revenue) to its salesforce. Although it has got a good feedback from the customers regarding its services, it needs to work upon the one negative feedback received against the eapps application that it did not help in screening the prospective employees efficiently.