Neville Taraporewalla, Country General Manager, Yahoo! India
<p align=justify>“Actually our objective is to play an important role in everyone’s daily life. The Internet is touching the social fabric of communities and Yahoo! is playing an integrated role by enabling its communities to grow, communicate and connect over the web and now the mobile.”
“Actually our objective is to play an important role in everyone’s daily life. The Internet is touching the social fabric of communities and Yahoo! is playing an integrated role by enabling its communities to grow, communicate and connect over the web and now the mobile.”
Yahoo! India has completed five successful years and has sketched for itself high growth plans. Neville Taraporewalla, Country General Manager, Yahoo! India -- one of the leading Internet Media and Communications Company in the world -- has been recently appointed on the Board of Yahoo Web Services India Pvt. Ltd. He is also the Chairman of the Internet and Online Association of India, (IOAI), India’s first apex body of portals. In conversation with Preeti Jadhav of exchange4media, Taraporewalla expresses his delight, traces the company’s growth and discusses the strategies for future. Excerpts: Q. Have you managed to overtake your competitors in getting share of Net advertising pie?
We do not comment on our competitors. What, I can say for Yahoo! India is that we have played a significant role in getting more advertisers to come on board and use the web. This has resulted in 100 per cent increase Year-of-Year of our online advertising revenues. We have grown faster than the market growth rates and that’s what is satisfying for our sales teams. Even though, we had higher reach, we continued to be a challenger brand to leading Indian portals and today have a significantly higher share of the ad pie than what we had in 2002. Our internal statistics show that we have certainly grown our ad pie at the expense of our competitors. So, I would say our turn around has been dramatic to that extend. It’s all there for people to see it. Our consumers, advertisers and agencies have all returned for more. Our marketing solutions concept which hand holds the client has been very successful.
Besides, Internet advertising has gained momentum in India. Marketers from across sectors, whether its financial services, FMCG, automobiles, entertainment or IT are increasing their spends on the Net to reach out to a more focused and affluent group of consumers.
Q. In comparison to the international standards, is the Indian market even getting closer to speak of itself as the dotcom hub?
Yes, I think it’s the beginning. It started in 2004 and is slowly building and should touch a crescendo end of this year, early 2006 as marketers find different ways to reach to their audience. With fragmentation of media across, they cannot ignore the Internet medium any more. So, as measurements become more effective we will be able to reach International standards. In fact, at Yahoo! India our objective is to share developments with our clients and agencies, the case studies in different markets. So, we as an industry leader will ensure that international standards are adopted in the Indian market.
Q. What aspect do you think is the most important for Yahoo! India’s future development?
Build a robust Indian community of Yahoo! users and offer the full range of portal services both in the Indian and local India languages. Obviously, it’s like a 3-5 year’s plan to get there.
Q. What do you foresee for the Indian Internet industry?
The emerging broadband services in India are making the Internet so much easier to access. While this means more overall greater Internet usage, I feel e-Commerce, especially in the ticketing segment; streaming services and online gaming will see the biggest gains.
Q. Can you elaborate more on your thoughts of Internet providing a greater reach in the affluent SEC A1 and A2 Households than any other media.
Marketers are now increasing their spends on the web to reach out to more focused and affluent group of consumers. The telecom sector and the developments in the online media go hand in hand. The mobile phone has now become the digital alter ego of the consumer. The mobile data services market in India is poised for an explosive growth over the next few years and will drive revenues of telecom service providers. This is because the mobile user today is looking for more value-added services.
Yahoo! India has clearly focused on leveraging its communication properties like Y! Mail, Messenger and Y!2SMS services through its Internet portal with tie-ups with all cellular operators across India which enables Yahoo! registered users to go connect to Yahoo! services whilst they are mobile. In addition for high-end GPRS subscribers we have also set up the Y! India Wap portal for download of mobile content at http://wap.yahoo.co.in from where rich media content can be downloaded besides connecting to Mail and Messenger services.
In the recent past, Yahoo! India has done synergistic campaigns with Kinetic and also with BBC World when they had launched their university challenge programme. It also did a promo with Pepsi when the movie Main Hoon Na was launched. As regards the entertainment sector, the Internet is now increasingly becoming the preferred medium of the youth and they surf the net for movie listings, film reviews, dating, horoscope, etc.
Q. Are you happy with the way the Internet industry has grown in the past couple of years?
Yes & No. Yes, because there has been a significant growth in total number of Net consumers but we all know the mobile subscriber base is double than that of the Net. No, because, there is a barrier and that is of buying a computer, which is not yet in the sub-Rs 10,000 range. If we can get going on offering a computer in the sub-Rs 5000 range, we can certainly expect a explosion in the number of users wanting to get on to the Internet. That’s when we will certainly see an Internet revolution.
Q. Has the growth of Internet economy on the whole really begun to change the mindset of the people towards viability of the Internet-based businesses?
Absolutely, let’s look around. You have successful portals in shaadi.com, bharatmatrimony.com, naukri.com, mahamazaa.com, weddingsutra.com all truly Indian businesses, which have survived the bust and are making a success out of the business. Even a government organisation like the Indian Railways have made a killing by selling railway tickets online. So yes, with the right mindset, you can set up a successful Internet business. One needs vision, passion and commitment to the medium besides having a clearly thought out online strategy.
Q. Can you share with us any interesting marketing initiatives?
If you look at the present client base of Yahoo! India, it’s quite diverse, ranging from sectors like financial, FMCG, dotcoms, automobiles, travel, tourism and education, etc. All the traditional brands advertise with us. In the financial sector we have ICICI Bank, Citi Bank, ICICI Direct, HSBC and others. In the FMCG sector, we have HLL, Marico, Pepsi, Motorola and Samsung. Channels that have advertised with us are ESPN, BBC and Discovery. Among the dotcoms we have Shaadi.com, Baazee.com and Bharatmatrimony.com. In the travel business we have Thomas Cook, Department of Tourism, Jet Airways and British Airways. In the automobile sector, we have Tata Motors. Our clients represent a cross section of the industry. As I said, there is slow but steady recognition of the Net as an advertising medium and reasoning in terms of response vis-à-vis target and audience reach.
Q. On the completion of five years in India, how has the journey been? As media reports said that Yahoo!'s entry into India had been inopportune, considering it came in around the time the dotcom meltdown had started.
Yahoo! was founded in 1995. It’s only after five years that we started operations in India. Yes, it did coincide with the dotcom meltdown but then Yahoo! was certainly not just another company. The belief that Internet would change the way we would communicate, transact and move services globally without intermediaries was an area which we focussed on. Today, we have over 374 million unique users across the globe. If Yahoo! were a country it would be the third largest country in the world.
With such pedigree, building Yahoo! India brick by brick after the 2002 restructuring in a market where the penetration was poor and the medium often, like any other new medium, had to demonstrate itself. On hindsight in 2002, we restructured our India operations and with a small band of Yahoo! India employees, who had the belief to turn things around. I am truly lucky and privileged for having an extraordinary set of team members who turned Yahoo! India around and today we are on a threshold of large investments in infrastructure, people and technology in the country. As you may be aware the latest IMRB report shows Yahoo! has the highest awareness among Internet users in India and is way above other competitors in the Indian market.
Today we play significant role in developing a strong foundation for the medium by supporting the industry initiatives through the Internet Online Association of India.
Q. Would you say that Yahoo! has found its foot as a preferred search engine?
Actually we all know that Yahoo! started out as a search engine. Our acquisitions in the past of all underlying technology are a continuous effort to provide better and relevant results. With Overture now part of Yahoo!, we have extended our network and ability to serve search-based text ads across larger network of websites.
In India with over 60 per cent of Indian Internet users using Yahoo! for different services, search has become an integrated service across our media, communication and mobile platforms. Yahoo! has always been a great search destination site which had provided cutting-edge technology to consumers to better search products with greater precision and relevancy.
Q. On the international front, Yahoo! has managed to scale up its other businesses like retail and auctions to reduce dependence on portal advertising alone. Is Yahoo! India too, working very hard in this direction?
Like I said, we would like to be a one-stop destination for providing online services to all Yahoo! consumers. Every market has its own dynamics and regulatory requirements to adhere to. In different markets, different services are being rolled out depending on the respective market dynamics. India is no different. Ultimately we would like Yahoo! India to be the best local destination on the web, mobile and any other connected device! Is that asking for too much?
Q. In your additional role as the Chairman of Internet and Online Association, what will be your agenda?
My role as the Chairman is to ensure we implement a charter set out and agreed jointly by the various members at the beginning of this financial year. Our primary objective this year will be to ensure that we work with the respective regulators effectively and play a role of a catalyst and adviser. Bring Global best practices to benefit the Internet industry in India. In addition we propose to support appropriate research and increase awareness of using the Internet as a medium for users to consume services online.
Q. Has Yahoo India found a strong ground? What have been the ups and downs for the company?
Actually our objective is to play an important role in everyone’s daily life. The Internet is touching the social fabric of communities and Yahoo! is playing an integrated role by enabling its communities to grow, communicate and connect over the web and now the mobile. The last three years have seen 100 per cent growth for our businesses in India and that has led us to ensure we have built a strong foundation to address the new challenges, which a dynamic medium is continuously throwing at us.
Q. How much of the localisation efforts have turned into reality?
We have put our revenue streams right within our Indian operations through multiple business units. Now, we are working towards localisation of content and features. For example, the recent Beta launch of the Yahoo! India Messenger in India has seen Indian localised audibles in the Hindi language. This will be followed by Indian avatars and some other efforts towards localising our communication products like Mail & Messenger into different languages. Our mobile property already has localised content and acts in fact very local in VAS products available for download in different states. So, our efforts have been successful and will get bigger in the coming months.
