Copy To Thrive!

 Players in the Rs 2,400-crore ,fast-growing ,Indian,online classifieds industry are freely ‘borrowing’ listings from rival sites in a bid to become the largest in their categories and attract funding. Only a few take the consent of advertisers.Not only small classifieds but large online classifieds players are also resorting to this practice.

The trend of replicating advertiser information is rampant across industries. According to IAMAI, jobs is the largest category in the online classifieds market constituting about 60% of the market share followed by matrimony (22%), B2B classifieds (13%) and real estate 7%.

Copying classifieds means saving on-ground sales staff, so a company can manage with a small tele-calling team, using cloud technologies, which scouts for listings across other platforms.

Easy scalability and rapid growth in this space are making foreign investors interested. Investor firms, such as Warburg Pincus, Sequoia Capital, eBay, Nexus Venture Partners and Matrix Partners, have stakes in over a dozen start-ups. In March, this year, Bangalore-based online classifieds venture Quikr raised Rs 550 crore from a group led by Swedish investment firm Investment Kinnevik.Two months ago, Housing raised Rs 115 crore from investors such as Helion Venture Partners and Qualcomm Ventures.