Sequoia Capital has invested $8.2mn (Rs. 40 crores) in Justdial, the local search engine firm.
This is JustDial’s third round of funding – JustDial earlier raised funding from SAIF Partners and US based Tiger Global Management. From what we know, JD’s earlier fundings weren’t even used (the plan was to roll out internationally, but it didn’t happen – so maybe it was a conditional deal?), so Sequoia story comes with some surprise.
JD receives close to 6 million voice queries a month (read: Local Search Service Traffic comparison) and their web traffic is a clear indicator of their authority in local search space (see: .Is JustDial Traffic Inflated?)
Traffic of Local Search Services in India
Fundings/Other Developments in Local Search space
- Helion Ventures Invests in Getit Yellow Pages
- Yahoo India acquired 30% stake in CallEzee
- Google integrates Voice Recognition in Local Search
- Navteq Launches India Map – We Take it for a Ride (come fly with us)
- Sulekha revamps it’s yellow page service– partners with Hungryzone, Burrp, Travelguru
Sequoia has also invested in SatNav – so expect some cross play between the two players.
Check out our complete coverage of local search market in India.
burrp, asklaila and metromela are not pure play yellow pages like JustDial, They rather fit into the category of Reviews and Ratings.
For the purpose of comparison, you forgot Sulekha Yellowpages which according to me must be better than all of the above [except Justdial]
Sulekha’s Graph pattern will resemble that of Yahoo local though not sure if it has halved in the past 12 months.
Chetan – on the other hand, all of the Local SEs that you mentioned are relying on rating/review as a differentiator (JD doesn’t have any significant traction when it comes to rating/review).
You can read our earlier post on traffic of all local search engines – we compared the traffic of all known/unknown sites (including Sulekha/Guruji/Google): http://www.pluggd.in/traffic-local-search-websites-india-297/
I think, this is a part of the strategy from Sequoia. They are minimizing their risk by investing in similar companies(thinking that one of them would take off) or they are thinking of future consolidation to have a better shot at the search engine market.