Justdial Success Story

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Justdial is a well-known company which works in India’s local search services sector. The successful journey of Justdial began with the effort of delivering the local details of the businesses on the Internet. Soon, it became a leader in making connections with businesses and customers. Today, Justdial is the perfect example of one of the great revolutions in the business sector in India that provides a unique vision for society.

This article is going to record the case study on justdial.com including its success story, business model, and journey of a startup to the number one player in the market of India.

In present times, services are located through internet searches, and availability is chosen at the convenience of the customers. One of the major players in India’s internet technology ecosystem is Justdial, which has significantly transformed how people look up and benefit from local search results.

Establishment of Justdial

The idea of Justdial originated from the creative vision of VSS Mani, a gifted entrepreneur who is quite adept at sniffing opportunities. Mani took inspiration from his previous job experience during the 1990s when he was working with a phone-based business information service. He soon founded Justdial in 1996 after carrying out a market study and finding a business opportunity for India’s extensive and diverse population in such a service.

Initially, Justdial worked along with the phone service where customers could call the hotline and ask for information on any local business. This is how the name of the company was derived, Justdial.

Highlights of Justdial

Justdial Founders and Team

V.S.S. Mani is the founder and CEO of the Justdial company, which is founded, run, and managed entirely by V.S.S. Mani. He has been with the company from the beginning days and has an incredible 33 years of experience as an entrepreneur. He was born in 1966 at “Tata Main Hospital”, Jamshedpur, and he was raised in Calcutta, aspiring to do a commerce degree and then become a chartered accountant. He got into the University of Delhi, but financing his education became impossible for both dreams.

United Database India, a Yellow Pages company, was Mani’s starting point. During the stint, he got to realise that the inputs below could be made far more accessible and valuable if made available over the phone. That ultimately led him to launch Ask Me back in 1989, but the baby never caught up. He later revamped it, which brought forth Justdial in 1996.

Key people in the leadership team of Justdial along with Mani are Abhishek Bansal as its CFO and V Krishnan. It was also previously associated with one Ramani Iyer, who happened to be a director in the company.

Early Age Struggles

For Justdial, its early years contained varied challenges, such as having poor technological infrastructure, hardly any people in the market knew about it, and it had to build a very credible database of businesses. Mani worked with a minuscule team from a garage and had telephony to call businesses and individuals by pitching an idea of a centralised local search service to them. It was a bootstrap operation with long hours of personal sacrifices and an unwavering belief in their vision. It was therefore logical that this became the gradual adjudication of their effort.

As an example of a local search site, Justdial understood that it had to invest massively in developing its database – well over one million listings in many sectors, from hotels to retail – to provide the single most important element in delivering the service: timely, relevant information; indeed, there are private people listed (“example hairdresser”) in the months.

Business & Revenue Model of Justdial

Justdial works with a unique business model of mixed paid and free services. Small businesses can advertise in it free of charge. The main objective of the company is data collection and processing of customers to make it available to its users via phones, SMS, and the Internet. Revenues for the company are derived from businesses that pay to be part of its platform. Commonly known as “Indian Google,” Justdial has a similarity with Google and is changing the local search scene in India.

According to the third quarter ending December 31, 2024, Justdial has recorded a net profit of ₹131.31 crore with an eye-popping 43% growth year on year. The same-period revenue report says that it had revenues of ₹287.33 crore, up by 8.4% from revenue for the previous year of ₹265 crore.

Justdial has posted revenue of ₹1,042.91 crores or 23.46% higher than the last financial year’s revenue of ₹844.76 crore for the year ending March 31, 2024.

Marketing Strategy of Justdial

Justdial’s marketing effort is as diverse as using both online and offline promotion for the upkeep of its brand. The use of all forms of media, from old and established ways of advertising, like television, print and radio, all the way to the latest in e-space, is the effort to get an “end-to-end” audience. Much of the fame that Justdial achieved was due to its telephone numbers, which have a bent for recall. Initially, the company operated under the number 2888-8888. It continues to operate under that number, along with yet another widely advertised number, 8288888888.

Its publicity and promotion by the Justdial marketing team is also the classic process of word-of-mouth recommendations, which, ironically, is even stronger in this form. The very best word-of-mouth was from the services directed toward the users themselves. Another major kickstart was when Amitabh Bachchan advertised Justdial when he announced KBC’s arrival, which was a greater geographical draw in trying to create the Justdial identification. JustDial traditional ads often get complemented with other online marketing tools like Google keywords.

Funding Rounds in Justdial

Justdial has generated an amount of $101 Million in the funding rounds of 7 funding steps. Here is the below table which explains the most important and significant funding rounds of Justdial.

There are the funding rounds of the Justdial company and the Nalanda Capital and Sapphire Ventures are the latest ones.

Challenges of Justdial

Justdial began when internet services were entering their infancy and had to contend with several issues in deploying advanced search features or even updating its mobile app. Some of the other issues the company had to contend with were data quality, location accuracy, search inconsistency, and data attributes and values management. In selling these services, one of the biggest hurdles was establishing a brand for Justdial and placing it in front of a larger audience.

Awards and Achievements of Justdial

Some of the prestigious awards and accolades received during Justdial’s journey include:

1. 2013 E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year Award (Services Category) by Ernst & Young.
2. Young Turks Awards 2012: Jury Special Commendation.
3. 2012 VCCircle Annual Awards: Best VC-backed Media & Communication Company.
4. 2012 Amity Corporate Excellence Award for Customer Service given by Amity Global Business School, 2012.
5. 2012 Citi Commercial Bank Award for Innovation in Business Process in the Empowering Growth of Emerging Enterprises event.
6. International Red Hat Innovation Award at the Red Hat and JBoss Innovation Awards in 2010.
7. All these awards denote the efforts made by JustDial towards innovation and excellence, as well as quality customer service.

Competitors of Justdial

The company Justdial has several competitors in the market, which are acting as complex competitors and a challenging future in the same area of business.

• Sulekha
• IndiaMART
• EC21
• Zimmber
• Nearbuy
• Exporters India
• Quikr
• Asklaila
• Fxchng

Future Plans of Justdial

Justdial, meanwhile, strives to improve margins on the one hand and brand value on the other. With support from the parent company Reliance Retail, Justdial wants to maintain its popularity and strengthen its position in the market. The company also intends to accelerate growth and innovation in operating its recently launched B2B marketplace, JD Mart.

Conclusion

The strength of vision, innovation, and indomitable spirit have been proved true by the success of Justdial and its business model. From its humble beginnings, the company emerged as a market leader, profoundly changing how millions of Indians have sought and availed local services. Continuous evolution and innovation in Justdial, keeping pace with ever-changing technology, have successfully engraved its name into the local search arena. The infantile mix of free and paid services provides for local small businesses and users who want a prompt, reliable solution. On a matching growth path, the joint venture with Reliance Retail marks the launch of JD Mart. Whether enterprises in need of visibility or consumers looking for trusted local service solutions, Justdial shall remain the connector of need and solution. Of course, much remains to be done as they continue to expand.