IndiaPost.com - Sulekha on expansion spree

India Post News Service

NEW YORK: With technology-driven societies moving closer across the world, Sulekha.com, the popular all-purpose web portal is feverishly expanding its global footprint to bring the growing Indian Diaspora and Indians in India together as a global community. The online web community portal for Indians anywhere has recently launched the portal in Canada having successfully replicated its US model in India over the last three years.

In a telephonic conversation last week, Sulekha.com founder and CEO Satya Prabhakar, who moved base two years ago from Texas to Chennai, India, said, "From being a small company with two people that started in the US in 2001, we have expanded to 16 US cities, 8 Indian cities, have launched in Toronto and will soon be launching in the UK and Dubai besides at least 30 more Indian cities." Until 2005, Prabhakar said, their focus had been on serving Indians in the US because they were more internet savvy.

"But in 2005 we figured that there were a lot of Internet-savvy people in India too who were enough for us to build a large enough enterprise. So we shifted our focus to India." In 2006, Sulekha.com opened itself for investments and a Bay Area, CA venture capital firm - Norwest Venture Partners - came on board with $10 million into this rapidly growing web community.

Interestingly enough, the needs of the Indians in the US on which the portal was built, appear to be the same for Indians anywhere, even in India. "Their needs are exactly the same everywhere - whether it is rentals, maids, drivers, the needs at local level are pretty much identical for Indians in the US and Indians in India," says Prabhakar.

"So what we have done at Sulekha is we have taken the same services that have succeeded for Indians in the US and transported them to Indians living in India and it has succeeded immensely there too. Now we have over 6 million people per month in India who visit Sulekha for various services; and we have about 520 employees in seven Indian cities and we are growing at a revenue level of around 80 percent per annum." Sulekha's amazing revenue growth is partly attributable to the increasing realization among people that they need to be electronically connected to avail of a variety of things like railway tickets, airline tickets, or check bank accounts or trade in stocks, explains Prabhakar.

"The other interesting thing that's happening is," he adds. "For a lot of Indians their first internet experience is happening through cell phones. They use cell phones not for just talking but for a lot of other things like SMS or text messaging etc.

Things like the iPhones are completely changing the rules of the game." In India, Sulekha.com has tied up with telecom giants Airtel, Reliance and Vodafone to provide classifieds and yellow pages. "I think more people source Sulekha.com than any other source online or offline to access local information," claims Prabhakar proudly. In the US and Canada, 95 percent of all online ticketing for Indian movies and events is done through Sulekha.com thanks to exclusive tie-ups.

"For the latest Kamal Hassan movie, 'Dasavatharam' we sold roughly 30,000-35,000 tickets in one weekend across the country in the US," informs Prabhakar. "We were the exclusive source through which the tickets were sold." With over 10,000 small businesses and 200-300 large corporate advertising through Sulekha.com, it has 80 million page-views and over 5 million unique visitors of which 65 percent are from the US and Canada.

With a growth rate of 70-80 percent per year, Sulekha.com is set to reach greater heights in coming years with plans afoot for expansion into the London and Dubai markets. "We are now truly connecting Indians worldwide," says Prabhakar, not too modestly.