ORG-Marg may hive off Net research division

agencyfaqs!

MUMBAI

ORG-Marg, plans to hive off its newly launched Internet research division, cyberorg-marg.com, as a separate company. ORG-Marg executives confimed the possibility of the Internet division becoming a separate company, but added that a lot will depend on the parent company VNU and the kind of sales the new division is able to generate in the first year of operations.

Speaking at the launch of its Internet services, Titoo Ahluwalia, the chairman of ORG-Marg said, "We decided to offer Internet measurement services as we realised that the market has been growing, but there is no accurate monitoring of data by an independent company."

ORG-Marg has already invested around Rs 1.5 crore in the new division. The company currently has 20 clients on its roster and expects to have at least 100 clients by the end of the year. The ORG-Marg brass is hopeful that the launch of its new services will help it achieve this target.

Currently, the market research agency is targeting two cities -- Mumbai and Delhi as these cities have the maximum Internet usage. The next step for the company would be to tap Bangalore, which also has a large business opportunity as well as a savvy base of Internet surfers. By the end of the year, ORG-Marg hops to establish base in six to eight cities in the country.

The research agency launched five new services as well -- net monitor, net designer, cyberenumerator, cyberencounter and cyberevaluator. The research agency expects to offer all the five new services by the end of September.

While net monitor and net designer are planning tools based on interviews with net users, the three cyber-based services are basically audience measurement systems based on automatic data capture through software meters. The research agency, which has already started work on net monitoring, expects to come out with the report later this week.

The agency expects to launch cyberenumerator end of June, cyber encounter end July and cyber evaluator during August and September. The agency will have three rounds of reports each year and each net monitor report has been priced at Rs 4 lakh per round.

The pricing of other cyber services would be related to the volume of traffic, but basically they would vary between Rs 70,000 and Rs 10 lakh. The data for all three software-meter-based services will be updated on an hourly basis and the users can analyse data anytime.

Data for these services will come with easy-to-use web based software which will allow analysis to suit the users requirements. It will have modules for planning, post-evaluation and optimising media schedules. Besides these new services, the market research agency is also planning to offer e-commerce measurement systems sometime during the second half of the current year.

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