I’ve been procastinating to write this post for a long time now. However, when I read about Sulekha’s IPO plans for 2009, I knew there just wouldnt be a better time.
As per a BS story, Sulekha plans to launch an IPO in 2009 targetting revenues of $ 30 million. The company is also planning to expand services to 40 new Tier II & Tier III cities in India. They currently serve 8 Indian cities, 14 cities in the US and one in Canada.
Wow !! From its fluke, humble beginnings to an impending IPO. Sulekha has definitely come a long way in a short span of time. As a regular Sulekha user, I’ve personally witnessed the transitions it has gone through over the past few years and wanted to chime in.
Sulekha was founded in 2001, during the post-bubble era. It originated as a place for people to post short stories and showcase their creative writing skills. With time, the popularity, usage and traffic to the site grew. The site soon developed a strong, loyal user base who spent a large amount of their online time on Sulekha, generating what is, one of the biggest user generated online Indian content repositories.
Soon, Sulekha launched classifieds, which was a huge hit with the US based NRI population. There was a pressing need for such a service, with a nation wide reach, amongst the burgeoning Indian population in the US. At its peak, Sulekha classifieds served 32 + cities across US and Canada. The company transitioned from a pure content focussed site into a city portal covering city specific classifieds, events and even ticket bookings for events.
