Dial for information

Talking yellow pages company Just Dial Service is on an expansion drive

Soon your favourite neighbourhood florist, the key repair shop and the 24-hour home-delivery chemist store down the road will be a tap away. By end of this year, if you are living in Delhi or Mumbai, you can dial a four digit toll-free number "" 1947 "" to source any specific contact details you want in the city.

In a bid to extend its business and product-related information service, Just Dial Service, the 50:50 joint venture between A&M Communications and Indiainfo.com Ltd, plans to launch an area-specific, B2C talking yellow page service in 15 cities across the country, including Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata.

While the company has already launched the 1947 service in Chennai, it plans to get the loop for other cities like Chandigarh, Jalandhar in the north, Pune in the west as well as Mysore, Kochi and Coimbatore in the south by the end of this year. The company has earmarked Rs 10 lakh per centre for its expansion project.

"We're right now working on getting the connectivity for these cities. Our objective is to reach out to maximum number of people and make information available to them 24 hours a day round the year," says V Krishnan, the country head of Just Dial Service.

Currently, the Rs 15-crore Just Dial Service operates out of Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Bangalore. The company claims to receive 60,000 calls a day, with Delhi and Mumbai registering the maximum number of calls per day at 15,000 and 18,000, respectively.

While callers get the information for free, the company primarily generates revenue from its paid customers who place listings in the Just Dial database for a fee. "We generally don't refuse data on specific request but our priority is to give information about our paid customers first if a customer seeks a general information," says Krishnan.

The company claims that 20 per cent of the calls they receive generate business for other businesses. Currently, it has a database of 10 lakh customers, of which paid customers range between 45,000 and 50,000.

While Just Dial launched its services with the pitch that it's quicker to get information on the phone than opening the telephone directory, it is following the footstep of its business rivals like Gettit Infomediary Ltd and Infomedia Pvt Ltd. Both the companies run voice services and have been in the yellow page printing business for several years.

"This is just to get a share of the pie. We will initially bring out the directory for Mumbai and Delhi and have already started canvassing for advertisements. We are targeting a revenue of Rs 10-12 crore from the two cities in the first year," says Krishnan.

Just Dial is not just depending on its fixed-line services for revenue. With increasing number of consumers drifting to other information options like the Internet and mobile phones, the company has also started providing backroom information services to companies like Airtel and Hutch in Delhi.

Besides, it has also done email marketing campaigns for brands like Chevrolet, Palio and Touchtel. "We have a database of 20 lakh fresh email addresses which we give out to companies for a fee of 10 paise per email," says Krishnan.

Unlike yellow page directory printing which today is a Rs 150- 200 crore business, voice service draw very little advertisement. Industry sources peg advertisement revenue in voice service at not more than Rs 4-5 crore.

But with the explosion of products and service-related business in the market, Amit Agnihotri, co-founder of Exchange4media, thinks that the voice service business has the potential to grow with below-the-line advertising currently growing at 40 per cent a year.

"With the urban consumer today adept at ducking the commercial overload, brands today want to do locally relevant advertising and are looking for consumer connect beyond mass media. Television, print media and outdoor campaigns are passe. The voice service is a relevant option."