Marketing Strategy Of Rediff.

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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 Indians worldwide. 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 ecommerce 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 Rediffs 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 Companys performance based advertising

platform. 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. Rediffs 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 extensive offerings 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 event sponsorships. The company targets Indias 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 Indias leading online community portal, providing news, information, communication, entertainment, free & paid community features & products, including e-commerce and mobile services. In 2001 Rediff.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 & highly interactive community portal across the metros & other cities Identify and promote key services - create awareness amongst the younger generation for Rediffs additional services Communicate Rediffs 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 high regard

Mr. Balakrishnan is perceived as an authority in the industry and is looked upon with

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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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Lets 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 news network with CNBC and IBN so they may also lead over Rediff. Rediff has the advantage that its 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, its 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

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