India's Online Classifieds Markets

Inspired by the west most  of the companies in India focused on ads and ecommerce but its the Indian desi entrepreneurs who showed that focusing on classifieds business was much more lucrative. Today India's online classifieds market is much larger than India's online ad market (without classifieds) and it is estimated to be close to Rs 400 -500 crores ( though some optimists  put it at much higher 800-900 crore ). The four major verticals in this market are  Jobs, Matrimony,Real estate and Automobiles

1. It started with vertical classifieds and first to become successful were jobs and matrimony and even today job classifieds is the major part of the above no.
2. Next to gain attention was real estate which saw lot of entrants but no clear winner so far with Indiaproperty as the leader in traffic.
3. Autos was the next category to gain attention and Carwale is the clear leader here but is only expected to breakeven by end of 2010
4. Horizontal portals is a recent trend in this field with many players starting in 2007 these are the major players in this field in the order of traffic

• Clickindia:
• Sulekha.com:
• Quikr.com:
• Justdial.com
• Olx.in

If you wonder what is the monetization model for these players is then it is the unglamorous lead generation route along with a  mix of advertising. Latest in this market is raising of 27 crores by Quikr which will heighten the competition even more but what I would like is the expansion of the pie beyond the above mentioned 4 sectors and the rise in C2C sector with consumers paying to put up premium ads for other customers but that would face competition from eBay