Coming Up In 2009 - The Sulekha IPO
Expect Sulekha to come out with an IPO sometime in 2009, by which time the company expects to clock revenues of about $30 million (Rs. 120 crore) says the Business Standard.
The company which started its operation in 2001, is putting in place a solid business model to entice the small and medium businesses by providing local classified and yellow pages services in any part of India. Under its assured advertising solution for instance, Sulekha is giving advertisers the guarantee to succeed, and if an advertiser feel that his target of getting a certain number of responses has not been met, Sulekha.com is assuring to run the same advertisement till they met the business demand.
Currently, Sulekha.com offers city-specific services in eight cities in India, apart from 14 cities in the US and one city in Canada.
So far, the company has raised two rounds of funding - the first to the tune of $4 million from Indigo Monsoon Group in 2001 and the second for $10 million from Norwest Venture partners in October 2006.
The online local Internet advertising market in India is estimated to be about Rs 450 crore at present, and counts local portals like asklaila.com, Guruji.com, JustDial and tolmolbol.com apart from international players such as Google and Yahoo!.
No doubt given the number of dotcoms waiting in the wings to launch an IPO, a number of people are going to be watching Sulekha closely.
Filed under: Business