The Hindu Business Line : Monster eyes more buys

INTERNATIONAL online recruitment portal Monster is on the prowl for more acquisitions to fuel its growth. The company now plans to utilise its cash pile of approximately $130 million to fund more acquisitions.

In the recent past, the company has made four acquisitions worth approximately $100 million, which included jobpilot.com, tinkle.com and JobsAhead.com, a leading Indian jobsite.

With the acquisition of JobsAhead.com, Monster has a total of 27 lakh resumes on its database making it the leading Indian recruitment site, according to Mr Arun Tadankii, as President and Managing Director for Monster Asia.

Monster and JobsAhead have registered an online traffic of 35 lakh and 26 lakh (April 2004 statistics) users, respectively.

"Acquisitions will be a strong driver of growth for Monster Worldwide Inc (previously TMP Worldwide Inc). With $130 million in cash and also available stock, we have an option of using either of them as fuel towards our acquisition strategy," Mr Stuart J. McKelvey, Group President, Asia Pacific, TMP Worldwide, told Business Line.

The Asia-Pacific region holds great importance to TMP, in particular the Indian subcontinent where the company has witnessed substantial ramp-ups. The online recruitment business is currently estimated at $12-13 billion and is expected to touch $25 billion over the next two years.

Having commenced ExpressResume, its first paid service, Monster is looking at the possibility of adding other paid services such as career counselling and online directories comprising list of companies in a specific geography to increase its revenue base.

In India, the company planned to increase its brand visibility especially in smaller towns such as Lucknow and Aurangabad along with cross-selling of the services available on Monster and JobsAhead to their respective clientele, added Mr Tadanki.

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