As per an interview with VCCircle, Rohit Agarwal, TechTribe CEO & founder, has admitted that the company is looking for a strategic partner or buyer and in the possibility that there are no takers, it will have to shut down.
“The model for referral recruitment as we had planned is not working out,” said Agarwal.
The site currently has about half a million users and 60% of the users hail from a IT background.
A great piece of advice from Rohit for those who are aspiring web entrepreneurs:
“Only mass internet plays can work in India, not niche plays. Unless it’s a service that is a must have, it doesn’t work in Indian web”
Considering how popular LinkedIn is in India, I’ve always wondered how TechTribe or Naukri owned Brijj for that matter plan to succeed.
I guess its more about striking a chord with the mass. And, to do that, you got to keep innovating and ensure that your value-proposition impacts your target market in tremendous manner. At the same time, you got to ensure that you remain simple and not tech oriented while you present your service to the users.
Well, timing plays a great role in success and failure.
The situation in Indian is similar to the dot com bubble in the U.S. There was already many popular Indian dot coms who are a commercial failure, and there are many more who are coming just to fail.
Also, I am not sure how this job referral site was adding value.
I also see this as a part of the “Make Money Online” fad in India.
In my opinion, rohit’s advice is golden for future entrepreneurs in India. Cricket, Bollywood, astrology, news etc — outside of these domains, you really need to identify how big your target market will be. Considering how small the entire Internet user base is in India, you have to put in some effort to identify how big an ‘O’ (opportunity) you’re targeting.
I always wondered how the website like http://www.jobsbyluck.com survive by providing free job ad service and without taking any money from job seekers.
first we thought we will start a startup company on indian jobs later we stopped but really interest to know these sites secret so to think of some tthng like that