80 percent of our traffic comes from mobile, but app-only strategy less likely to work, says Quikr founder

From a one storey office dwarfted among trees and buildings of Mumbai to a sprawling 4 acre campus in Bengaluru, the online classifieds portal Quikr has come a long way. Today, it’s a common name among masses as a where-to-go site to sell, buy, rent and more. Founded in 2008 by Pranay Chulet, Quikr had around 10,000 unique users per month when it started its operations, and currently the number has increased to 30 million unique users per month. Quikr caters its services in over 1000 cities and has more than 12 categories.  Talking about its new headquarters, Chulet said, “When we decided to move our headquarters to Bangalore late last year, it was a strategic shift as we wanted to draw from the city’s exceptional tech talent pool. Our new four acre campus in Bangalore has a seat strength of over 1200 people.” Quikr has been inspired from Craigslist and the Indian space now seems perfectly favourable for such a market. According to a Morgan Stanley research report the size of the Indian Internet market (considering gross merchandise value) is expected to increase from $11 billion in 2013 to $137 billion by 2020. The classifieds/online advertising market is estimated to rise to $7 billion at 37 percent CAGR. “The Indian online classifieds market is growing steadily and we see great potential in tier 2 and tier 3 cities as well as the rural market,” Chulet adds. The markets have been driven by mobile and Internet penetration. At Quikr, 80 percent of its traffic comes from mobile (equally split between mobile browser and mobile app). However, Chulet doesn’t believe an app-only strategy will work for a marketplace like Quikr. “We want buyers and sellers to connect with each other on whichever platform they feel most comfortable. For example, we have consumers that are neither app nor desktop users and rely only on our Missed Call service for transactions,” he explained further. “Not just in India but even globally, we are the only horizontal classifieds player to go in for verticalization,” he goes on to explain. The company has been focussing on its key verticals such as cars, goods, jobs, homes and services, some of these are already its strongest and verticalisation allows focusing more deeply. Now, Quikr has been expanding as well as evolving. Earlier this year, the company announced the QuikrNxt feature that allows buyers and sellers to chat with each other on the platform, while keeping mobile numbers private. This also helps to deal with users concerned with privacy. QuikrNxt also keeps a track of the conversations and maintains chat record. Quikr also wants to enter other wider segments and has decided to start testing waters in the entertainment sector. It recently signed an MOU with film industry veterans Vivek Bohra and Aadore Mukherjee to jointly build a first-of its-kind platform for Actors, Casting Professionals, Directors, Producers and other segments of India’s large film industry.