Type of business Public Available in English Headquarters Noida, India | Type of site Job search engine Founded March 1997 Founder(s) Sanjeev Bikhchandani | |
Naukri.com is an Indian job portal operating in India founded in March 1997.
Contents
- History and milestones
- Naming issues
- Business Model
- Naukri JobSpeak
- Mobile Apps
- Awards and Recognitions
- References
Naukri.com is the brain child of Sanjeev Bikhchandani and started the company, Info Edge (India). Info Edge is a listed company on the Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange of India. It went public in November 2006.
As of Dec 2016 Naukri.com had a database of about 49.5 million registered job seekers and an average of about 11,000 resumes were added daily while about 130,000 resumes were modified daily during the Fiscal year 2013-14. During the Fiscal year 2013-14, 51,000 corporate customers (including hiring consultants/firms) paid Naukri.com for services like database access, advertising / listing on the site amongst others.
Naukri.com is one of the core businesses of Info Edge India. Other online recruitment businesses are Quadrangle, web portal Naukrigulf.com, entry-level hiring website Firstnaukri.com. According to comscore, Naukri.com leads the online job market with 70% traffic share. The website has 40 million resumes registered.
History and milestones
Naukri.com was launched in March 1997. The company was started as a floorless employment exchange. It was a database of resume, jobs and recruitment consultants. Conceived as a platform of jobseekers and hiring managers meet, the services went commercial in October 1997.
It all started when Sanjeev Bikhchandani quit his corporate job at Hindustan Milkfood Manufacturers (now Glaxo Smithkline) and founded two companies- Info Edge and Indmark. Info Edge offered salary reports to various categories of college graduates such as engineering and MBAs. Salary reports were sold to companies, somewhere between 5000 to 10,000 INR. Sanjeev and his business partners at Info Edge operated from servants’ quarter located in Sanjeev’s home.
In 1991, The Department of Telecom (DoT) advertised for videotext services. Info Edge submitted the business plan to DoT and it was shortlisted. Reasons undisclosed, the department cancelled the pilot project. This was a setback and Sanjeev and his business partner parted ways. His partner took Indmark and he was left in charge of Info Edge.
During a visit to an IT fair at Delhi’s fair ground (Pragati Maidan), he was drawn to a stall written WWW Curious, Sanjeev found more about how the Internet worked. Internet was new in India in the 90s. He took help from his brother Sushil who was residing in the US to hire a server. The server was hired at a monthly rent of $25 and Sanjeev gave 5 per cent share in his company to his brother.
This is how Info Edge India, which was then a holding company of Naukri.com was started. In May 1, 1995, it became Info Edge (India) Private Limited.
In 1996, recession hit and the company suffered loss. It was then Sanjeev took help from his friend Anil Lall and shared the thought of creating the website. Anil Lall was offered 7 percent share in the company. Another friend, VN Saroja took care of the operations. She was made 9 percent shareholder in the company.
In 1996, the company lanunched a series of television commercials featuring a fictional character called Hari Sadu who is the cause of his employees looking for new jobs.
Naukri.com was launched on April 2, 1997 and the first version of the website had 1000 jobs collected from 29 newspapers. Reviews of business magazines, newspaper and word-of-mouth followed. Jobseekers learnt job search on Naukri was free, and soon more people started logging in. Traffic on Naukri.com slowly and steadily increased.
Naming issues
The website has faced problems with competitors registering websites with names similar to naukri.com. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) ordered Abs IT Solutions to transfer the domain naukarie.com to Info Edge India.
Business Model
The website follows Business-to-Business and Business-to-consumer models.
Naukri JobSpeak
It publishes a monthly report called Naukri JobSpeak. The report includes hiring activities across different industry sectors, cities and functional areas. The monthly index presents the current picture of the Indian Job market.
Mobile Apps
In 2012, the website launched Mobile App for Smartphone users. The job search app was designed for Blackberry, Android and iPhone devices.
With the launch of mobile Apps and HTML site, more than half of traffic inflow happened through Apps and Mobile sites.