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Now you won’t have to download zillions of applications on your mobile phone. Local search firm JustDial has launched a new app, JD, that will help consumers to buy anything from movie and flight tickets to order food online.
“Our app will solve a fundamental problem for the consumers as they don’t have to download different apps for different needs. Besides, it will help increase sales for the local retailers who are losing out to big e-commerce players.
“However, we are just an aggregator of all the products and services. We are also launching a mega campaign with Amitabh Bachchan by March. We are spending about few crores there,” VSS Mani, founder, JustDial, told BusinessLine .
Going global With this, Mani plans to take JustDial to global markets in the next six months with its recently launched e-commerce model.
The company plans to enter the South-East Asian market starting with Indonesia and then West Asia with its JD app that allows consumer search for a product through voice search.
The company was working on the app for the last 15 months and plans to launch it in multiple regional languages. It also plans to launch JDSocial, a discovery networking app, in the next quarter.
Clarifying that he is not getting into pure play marketplace model, Mani said that the company will not be giving discounts or cash backs but help consumer get the best price through its price comparison feature from groceries to flight bookings.
Listing business “We are from the day one focussed on profits. For our vendors we are already charging a subscription fee. We expect the revenues from our e-commerce app to be at par with our listing revenues in the next three years,” Mani said, adding that the listing business has clocked about ₹700 crore this year with a profit of ₹130 crore. It is growing at 20-25 per cent.
The company has also launched an app for sellers that will help vendors create their own app and a microsite wherein they will be able to manage inventory, check pilferage and manage the billing system also.
It has already signed up about 1,700 sellers across the country and plans to onboard about 30,000 by end of this year.
For this, the company is also ramping up its sales force and plans to hire 2,000 people by FY17.
“With the e-commerce app, there will be a huge uptick in our margins too,” he added.
The company, which started in 1996, made a blockbuster debut in the capital markets, and is considered to be the most successful bootstrapped start-up.
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