I have always been intrigued by the local online search business in the context of Indian market. Sulekha with its YellowPages is a old operator while JustDial is relatively new but has gained continuous traction both Online and through its call center service.
Data suggests that Sulekha has lost traction in the past 12 months. It recorded peak traffic in July 2008 and since then it has halved. [ From 200K unique Visitors / day to 100K Unique visitors / day] For the month of July-09, Sulekha had ~ 3.0 mn unique visitors and 19 mn page views. Data from Alexa suggests that, 42% of Sulekha’s visitors are on YellowPages – pro-rated, Sulekha YellowPages had 1.26 mn unique visitors and 8 mn pagviews for the month of July-09.
Compare this to JustDial, pure play local search services provider which recorded 2 mn unique visitors and 29 m pageviews for the month of July-09. JustDial’s traffic doubled between Jan-08 and Jan-09.
Its time Sulekha arrest its falling share and also focus on improving its page views [retain customers to the platform] before other specialized search service providers gain traction.
