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Indiatimes has re-launched its email service, and former ENIL MD AP Parigi will play a mentoring role in Times Internet Ltd
Times Internet Ltd (TIL), one of the earliest publishers in the online space in India, has re-launched its email service in an effort to capture a larger share of the market.
Currently, Indiatimes is the third-largest portal in India after Rediff and Yahoo! Its email service, however, has not been a resounding success. Consider this: Rediffmail has 53 million registered users, whereas Indiatimes Mail has only 12.5 million.
The new Indiatimes Mail is designed to be the single point of entry for users, taking them to practically all the Indiatimes verticals like news, travel, shopping and cricket. The company also has plans to make its portal more customised, along the lines of iGoogle and My Yahoo!
Indiatimes will launch a mass campaign to promote the new Indiatimes Mail, indicating that it will bank on email to ramp up its user base and traffic across its portal. In other words, the product will be the platform for the company as it rolls out revamped versions of its many products.
Dinesh Wadhawan |
The company intends to be careful about spamming users and will not engage in email marketing until opted for by the user. There will be space for display advertising, though. Wadhawan adds that TIL is also working on an “ROI-based ad platform” to deliver contextual advertising.
TIL is already in the process of revamping its range of verticals and has redesigned the Indiatimes home page and the movies, cricket and video verticals. Next on the list are Indiatimes Travel and Indiatimes Shopping. “We will be adding a lot of web 2.0 features to the shopping site, which will be launched in a month,” is all that Wadhawan would reveal. He added that the company is looking at syndicating content from local as well as international players, both for text and video. It is in talks with international media companies to deliver Indiatimes content in other countries. In fact, it is also planning to expand the editions of its website to include UK and Southeast Asia (it already has India and US editions).
The company will also build up user-generated content through communities (which will be launched in a couple of months) and citizen journalism. Wadhawan says that the communities will be developed for groups with specific interests, such as business networking.
While Indiatimes will roll out a series of revamps over the next 12 months, the company also has its eye on the mobile. According to Wadhawan, “We will be looking at both on-deck (on WAP) and off-deck (downloadable applications) solutions on mobile. We will be particularly focusing on B2B solutions for enterprises.” He adds that local search is another area that the company is looking at, based on its strength in publishing local guides. It is also considering acquisitions in the mobile space, adds Wadhawan.
The fact that TIL is giving itself a serious internal audit is evident from the fact that AP Parigi will now play the additional role of mentor in the company (apart from his existing responsibilities). Parigi is on the board of Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd (BCCL). According to Wadhawan, “Mr Parigi will be leading us in operational excellence. He will be overseeing policies related to investments and the overall strategy of the company.”