Vote for you favorite local search startup
I mentioned earlier about getting your votes on some of your favorite startups.
Here’s the first one - covering the local search category. Go ahead and vote for your favorite local search related startup.
Additional categories will follow:
Comparison of Web Analytics sites
In the first part “The voodoo of web metrics” of this series, I talked about the various methods for computing web metrics. In this post, I’ll cover some of the players in this industry and the methods they employ for metrics calculation.
Alexa is the grand-daddy of web analytics. Alexa has been around since Web 1.0 days and is often used by several bloggers as a quick reference to statistics related to popular websites.
Methodology: Alexa data is collected via the Alexa toolbar that is installed by willing participants. Their methodology for calculating the statistics is fairly well documented. Based on the classification in my earlier post, Alexa employs user focused, browser toolbar based method for collecting data.
The two main things working in Alexa’s favor are:
a) Alexa data and graphs are free to use. Hence, the service is used by a lot of bloggers to get an insight about traffic details for popular websites
b) Alexa is one of the few website analytics companies that provides international data. For instance, you can view the top websites in India over here.
The main drawback is that Alexa data is unreliable. There is unanimous agreement about this. Ever wondered why ? Well, it is because Alexa provides the ‘Alexa toolbar’ only for IE on Windows. While there are 3rd party extensions for Firefox, they arent the same as the official toolbar.
Wrapping up 2007
As we draw the curtains to 2007, I thought it’d be a good time to look back and seek the audience vote on their favorite startups.
The idea is to club the startups in categories and conduct a poll for each of them:
Here’re some of the categories and the startups as part of each category:
Local search:
Asklaila, JustDial, Burrp, Guruji, Metromela, Tolmolbol, Dwaar, Citipals
(Startups focusing on a particular city / region have been intentionally left out. )
Social Networking:
IndyaRocks, MingleBox, DesiMartini, BigAdda, Sumitr, cafe ibibo
Mobile based:
Vakow, SMS GupShup, Chittr, mocodile, activemobs
(mobile, permission based marketing companies have been intentionally left out).
photo sharing and printing:
iTasveer, picsquare, Zoomin, printo
ticket booking:
bookeazy, kyazoonga, bookmyshow
map based:
sadakmap, mapmyindia, routeguru, commuteeasy, mapunity
telephony based:
voiee, tringme, ubona
I am excluding the travel portal and the dvd rental categories since I’ve done those earlier (and given that these verticals have matured a bit).
Some of the companies overlap across categories and so its extremely difficult to categorize them exactly.
And here’s where I need your help –
This post has been written in a jiffy (still on vacation) and so there’s a very good chance that I may have missed out on a few. If you feel that there need to be additional categories / companies that I have missed out, or any of the companies above a mis-categorized, please let me know.
Update: I will launch the poll as soon as the categories / list is finalized
PC World - Best Indian Websites 2007 - what a sham
Last week PC World India announced the first list of best Indian websites for 2007. I took my time to read through the entire article. Having finished reading the entire story, I cant help but wonder - what a half hearted, lame-ass job they have done at writing the story. For a magazine with their stature and resources, they could have definitely invested more time in researching and taken a more objective, analytical approach.
Following are some of the weaknesses of the PC World ratings approach.
To begin with, they do not define what equates to an Indian website.
Is it a website that caters exclusively to the Indian audience ? Is it a site that needs to have a presence in the Indian market ? Is it a website that has a significant Indian audience ? Without a precise definition, on what basis is a site included as part of the rating process ?
Read more
The Indian Internet landscape
There is a lot happening in the Indian Internet landscape. New portals are emerging, existing players ramping up services, exciting new startups going live.
Here’s my effort at creating a taxonomy:
The Portals segment is definitely seeing some action lately:
Results of the Online Indian travel portals poll
Exactly a month ago, I started a poll to vote for the best online Indian travel portal. Well, the poll received 46 responses (Wow !!) - A HUGE thanks to all of you who spared time to cast your vote. Your response is greatly appreciated.
On to the results of the poll:
With 22 votes, Cleartrip got 48% of the total votes. MakeMyTrip came in second with 12 votes (26%) followed by Yatra with 8 votes (17%).
I will lock down this poll and brainstorm about the next poll.
Any ideas what the next poll should be about ?
Feeds screwing up the comparison table
I just noticed that the Feeds seem to screw up the comparison table formatting to some extent. For better viewing, I’d suggest viewing the table on the blog directly.
Comparison of online travel portals in India - few observations
Here are some of the observations I made during my research on the Indian online travel portal.
Obs 1) Several of the portals showed me deals which did not make any sense logistically. For example, while searching for flights from Ahmedabad to Mumbai, a couple of portals showed me a few itineraries with a stopover in Delhi and Hyderabad. Now, why would I opt for a stopover in Delhi or Hyderabad if I intend to go to Mumbai ?
Results from Yatra:
Results from ClearTrip:
Comparison of online travel portals in India
Earlier, I had compared the players in the Indian online DVD rental market. This time around, I decided to do a head-to-head comparison of the Indian online travel portals.
Why online travel portals ?
The Indian online travel market is H-O-T !! Over the last year, the Indian online travel portal market has seen a lot of action - New players have emerged, VC investments have been made, aggressive online marketing campaigns and now even several international players are considering entering into the market - an all out race to get the biggest market share. Oh, and did I mention that the Indian online travel segment is the fastest growing e-commerce sector ?
I have tried to be as accurate as possible based on my research from publicly available sources. However, if you find any discrepancy, please feel free to let me know and I shall correct it accordingly.
The comparison does not include Rediff FareSearch and IndiaTimes Travel for the following reasons:
1) It is difficult to estimate the traffic and market share for these two sites. Alexa doesnt display the traffic details for the travel sub portal for IndiaTimes. The only detail Alexa provides is that 2% of all visitors to IndiaTimes website visited their travel sub portal. Details for Rediff FareSearch dont even show up in the traffic details for Rediff.com.
2) Rediff FareSearch is more of a travel deal aggregator as opposed to a travel booking portal. What I mean is that they do not provide the ability to book flights on their site. Instead, they redirect you to the corresponding airline’s booking engine to complete the transaction.
So which sites are included in the head to head comparison ?
I have decided to include the five biggest players (Note:IndiaTimes travel may be bigger than some of these but I dont include them based on explanation above) in the online Indian travel segment based on their Alexa traffic details:
MakeMyTrip, Yatra, ClearTrip, TravelGuru, TravelMartIndia
Without further ado, here’s the comparison matrix. Some additional observations follow
Indian travel portals comparison
MakeMyTrip.com |
Yatra.com | ClearTrip.com | TravelGuru.com | TravelmartIndia.com | |
| Founded | April 2000 US2India ticketing 2005 - India domestic ticketing |
August 2006 | July 2006 | February 2006 | March 2000 |
| Market served (TIFI == Ticketing to International destinations From India) |
Domestic flights, hotels,vacation packages, TIFI Offer ticketing from US & Australia to India as well |
Domestic flights,hotels, recently started TIFI | Domestic flights, hotels | Domestic flights, hotels, TIFI, vacation packages | Domestic flights, hotels, TIFI, vacation packages |
| Sales Figures | $100 million by Feb 2007 Estimated $120 million by march 2007 [1 ] |
$30-35 million by Feb 2007 Estimated $120 million by 2007 end [2 ] |
No figures available. Aiming for 400000 transactions in first year [3 ] | none available | none available |
| VC Funding | $10m + $6m + $13m [4 ],[5 ],[6 ] |
$5m [7 ] |
$3m + $8m [8 ], [9 ] |
$10m + $15m [10 ] |
none available |
| Market Share (based on alexa traffic) |
50-55 % | 17-19% | 17-19% | 7-9% | 1-3% |
| User Interface while searching/booking tickets | Bad. Gaudy colors. My biggest gripe - till the last screen, it did not clearly show me the total cost (tax incl.) of the selected flights. | decent - looks very cluttered though. sorting of flights by price, departure time etc. Also displays the cheapest fare for the selected itinerary. Response time a bit slow though. | Simplest, cleanest and best user interface amongst all. Easily readable info about prices (incl. taxes) | good, intuitive interface for selecting the departing and returning flight. however, when i clicked book it, took forever to contact payment gateway - huge problem. | after 2-3 minutes of searching, it came back with an error that no flights were found. |
| Results from a sample booking from Ahmedabad to Mumbai (dep: April 9, return: April 23) | Rs/- 3548 | Rs/- 4000 | Rs/- 3555 | Rs/- 3324 | returned no flights in result |
| Sample itinerary booking above - airlines included in result | SpiceJet, Indian Airlines, Jet,Air India | Indian Airlines, Jet, Air India, Sahara, Kingfisher | Spicejet,Indian Airlines, Kingfisher | Spicejet, Indian Airlines, Air India, Jet, Kingfisher | returned no flights in result |
| Mobile features | recently announced mobile features in the works [11 ] | couldnt find any on their website | Recently introduced searching for fare listings by SMS | launched SMS flight booking in Karnataka. Couldnt find anything on their website though. [12 ] |
Search, book flights by SMS. Tied up with Paymate for booking through mobile |
| Miscellaneous differentiators | Market leader. shortlisted for Red Herring 100 Asia companies. | Book hotels from any Reliance World Outlet. Also, have introduced a sister site www.raahi.com as a travel destination guide. | Great, clean interface. Founding team collaborates through blog soliciting feedback and making appropriate changes. | offers cruise bookings too. | mobile booking features. first online travel portal in India. offers ‘conference planner’ service. |
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