MSN India tries to get its groove right
MSN has had an Indian portal since the last several years now. Inspite of being an early entrant, they’ve failed to gain market share and just like the scenario in the western hemisphere, they lag behind Yahoo. It seems like they’ve made peace with the fact that Yahoo is more appealing and popular with users than their own portal.
But recently MSN India seems to be on the offensive. Last month, Microsoft COO, Kevin Turner, was in Mumbai - where he met with some high ranking execs of Indian companies. The invitees included - Mukul Sood (VP, content & applications, VSNL), Milind Naik (CTO, Star TV & Indya.com), Neeraj Roy (MD & CEO, Hungama Mobile), Manish Agarwal (VP Marketing, Rediff.com) and Vibhore Sharma’s hand (VP, Products at Naukri.com) and of course M’soft personnel also.
The agenda - how Microsoft can better leverage the web space in the Indian context.
On close heels of that meeting, comes Financial Express’ interview with Jaspreet Bindra, country manager for MSN India.
Some of the key excerpts from the interview that I found really interesting:
In response to a question about Yahoo’s lead in the Indian market, Jaspreet responds:
“As mentioned before, the India market is nascent and we do not believe that winners and losers have been decided.”
In response to another question, Jaspreet says:
“The reason we have not done particularly well in India is that until now, we didn’t really focus on this market, primarily because the online spend in India continue to be ridiculously low (somewhere in the range of $60 million), which would possibly be lower than the total ad spend of one large US company. This is because our Internet penetration is embarrassingly low. I think, Romania would be a bigger market than India. But, all that is set to change and we are in the process of a complete overhaul.”
Hmm….focusing on the US market hasnt exactly yielded spectacular results. Will Indian market be any different ? I have my own doubts.
As part of the interview, Jaspreet also mentions about two new initiatives by MSN India: MSN Contribute and MSN Debate. MSN Contribute comprises of user contributed stories and articles. MSN Debate is exactly what the name implies - debatable topics are opened up to user participation. Meanwhile, also check out the lame website for MSNIndiaspecials.
One would think that AOL’s recent foray into the Indian market probably had a role to play in MSN India’s offensive. Well, I dont think AOL’s move was the big factor. One of the biggest reason, I think, is that MSN has lost the battle in terms of advertising revenue in the US market. Google’s domination in the US market and its recent acquisition of DoubleClick have made MSN desperate. And this desperation led MSN to consider the possibility of a Yahoo acquisition ?
With the battle in the US market already lost, why not focus on emerging markets such as India ? Google is yet to establish a strong base in the Indian market. Would be a good time to strengthen their presence here so that they can effectively compete with Google.
What do you guys think ?
