Sulekha - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Sulekha.com is an Indian Internet and Mobile company offering local commerce services enhanced by social media interactions in 46 Indian and 16 North American cities. Adopting the slogan “Find. Buy. Sell. Share. In your city.” Sulekha’s local commerce services uniquely and seamlessly integrate Classifieds, Yellow Pages, Events, Quotes and Offers in over 300 categories.
As per (July 2010), among Indian Internet companies, Sulekha is the 5th largest by reach and is the leading local commerce (Classifieds and Yellowpages) destination. CNBC in India called Sulekha “India’s Largest Classifieds and Yellowpages Destination.” Sulekha was featured in over 500 media stories and was chosen by PC World as the “Best Indian Destination for Local Commerce”.

History

Sulekha.com was founded by Satya Prabhakar and Sangeeta Kshettry, and was incorporated in India as Sulekha.com New Media Pvt. Ltd. in 2002. The company received its first round of funding from Indigo Monsoon Partners (IMG) and broke-even in 2.5 years. The company raised a Series A round from Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) in 2006.

Board of Directors

The Board of Directors comprises Param Parameswaran (Chairman), Satya Prabhakar (CEO), Promod Haque (Managing Partner, Norwest Venture Partners, Palo Alto, California) and Harish Raghavan (Indigo Monsoon Group and CEO of GraciePoint, New York).

Operations

Sulekha today has 9 sales offices in India (Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Kolkata and Coimbatore) and 3 sales offices in North America (New York, Austin, Toronto). Its corporate offices are located in Chennai.

Service Offering and Business Model

Sulekha.com defines its city based services as Local Commerce that spans Classifieds, Yellow Pages, B2B and Events. It offers transaction oriented UGC verticals that span Travel, Mobiles, Money, Cars, Food, Education and other verticals that offer reviews, user ratings, information and social interaction about products and services to its users.

Sulekha.com seeks to connect transaction-oriented users to local businesses and national/global brands and derives revenues by making brands and businesses pay for advertising and leads. Sulekha.com’s services are largely free to users though many choose to pay for its premium services.
According to the company, it has served a customer base of over 1000 brands and more than 30,000 SMBs and millions of registered online and mobile user members.
Sulekha.com also offers latest news which might be of interest to Indian and other people around. Sulekha.com also displays google adsense advertisements apart from paid banner and preferred listing service providers. Traffic Analysis of Sulekha.com can be explored to fully explore the business model and changes going onto sulekha.com.

Marketing and Creative Commercials

While Sulekha.com has gained popularity largely through word-of-mouth, it has created and aired highly acclaimed commercials using quirky viral ideas.

The Red Arrows

This is a 40-second TV commercial that made the famous “red arrow” the creative mascot of Sulekha. The basic premise is that whatever one wants in his or her city, he can get it solved by shooting a red arrow at Sulekha.com. So, the TVC captures a family moving from one city to another, with all family members shooting ‘red arrows’ at Sulekha.com to fulfill multiple of their needs.

Arjuna the Archer

Taking off on the “red arrows” concept and inspired by a 1000-year old story-telling art of Patha Chitra Katha (painting on palm leaves), Sulekha created an animated commercial “Arjuna the Archer” to a traditional Indian background score. The commercial told the story of a young archer, besotted by a girl across town, who achieves his heart’s desire by simply shooting red arrows at Sulekha.com. This commercial won international acclaim through multiple awards:

2008 Cannes Bronze Award for “Animation under film craft” (JWT)
2009 Adfest Lotus Roots Silver Award in Film (JWT)
2009 Adfest Lotus Roots Bronze Award in Film Craft (JWT))

Yellow Rippers YouTube Viral

Sulekha.com launched a viral contest asking people to submit videos of themselves ripping up phone books in a dig at the fading importance of printed books and the emergence of digital medium. More than 250 videos were submitted with some tearing up fat books with bare hands, often in strange positions (e.g. hanging upside down). The contest spread fast with millions of views of various videos. The viral campaign won these awards of recognition:

2007 Adfest Gold for Sponsored/Promotion category (JWT)

Nothing but Babies Member-Inspired Commercial

A member of Sulekha scripted, shot and posted a video commercial showing a couple talking about how they were able to do multiple things through Sulekha, including finding each other except, they both agree, babies. This commercial also won wide recognition.

Sulekha.com raised over a Million dollars from its members within a few days of the Tsunami that hit Tamil Nadu and other parts of India during Dec 2004. This won critical acclaim from several American newspapers.

Sulekha today does not invest in tvc as it does not require to do it. It is been active on Internet advertisements and google ads.

Awards won by Sulekha

PC World
PC World (magazine)
PC World is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal-technology products and services...

(June 2008) rated Sulekha.com the Best Local Search Site in India.
MSN
MSN
MSN is a collection of Internet sites and services provided by Microsoft. The Microsoft Network debuted as an online service and Internet service provider on August 24, 1995, to coincide with the release of the Windows 95 operating system.The range of services offered by MSN has changed since its...

(July 2008) rated Sulekha.com the Best WAP Site in India for Local Commerce.
CNBC
CNBC
CNBC is a satellite and cable television business news channel in the U.S., owned and operated by NBCUniversal. The network and its international spinoffs cover business headlines and provide live coverage of financial markets. The combined reach of CNBC and its siblings is 390 million viewers...

(Oct 2008): Sulekha.com…the largest online Classifieds and Yellow Pages in India.
Comscore
ComScore
comScore is a Internet marketing research company providing marketing data and services to many of the Internet's largest businesses. comScore tracks all internet data on its surveyed computers in order to study online behavior....

(Jan 2009): Ranked most popular Classifieds and Yellow Pages in India
Venture Beat (May 2008): “A merger between Facebook and Craigslist may seem like a pipe dream — but in India it’s already happening. The web community Sulekha has quickly grown to become India’s largest user-generated content site…with 6 million members”
Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....

(UK): “Sulekha.com…the world’s largest online Indian community…is extraordinarily sticky – some visitors call it addictive…”