Prashant Lalwani (141333)

Rhishikesh Joshi (141340)

Samant Sharma (141341)
Group no - 7

Institute of Management, Nirma University

Submitted to:
Prof. Jayesh Aagja

Date: 2/9/2015were originally printe printed

ASKME.COM
HISTORY
GetitInfoservices and Infomedia were the two company that operated yellow pages in India.
Yellow pages refer to a telephone directory of businesses, organized by category, rather than
alphabetically by business name and in which advertising is sold. The directories were
originally printed on yellow paper, as opposed to white pages for non-commercial listings.
The traditional term yellow pages are now also applied to online directories of businesses. In
2006, both the companies collaborated and a new corporate entity was formed known as
GetitInfomedia. In order to provide a common name to their digital product venture the
company decided to bring in a completely new brand name, which is AskMe. AskMe became
companys flagship offering in April 2014.

INTRODUCTION
AskMe, the flagship product from GetitInfomedia, is a one stop destination to find
information related to anything and everything; be it restaurants, travel, matrimony, jobs,
education, mobile, gadgets, etc. It caters to users immediate and impulsive requirement of
information on mobile, internet and voice. AskMe has an extensive directory of information
from across India that is both accurate as well as diverse.
AskMe, launched in June 2011, is available 24X7 for consumers across all major cities in
India. Users can call on 4444 4444 44 (ten-times 4) or logon to www.askme.com for
information on companies, products, and services. AskMe Voice service boasts of an
extremely consumer friendly call flow, which works to ensure that the customer gets realtime and accurate information.
As a business, one can reach their customers whenever and wherever they want using
AskMe's robust and cost-effective service that is available across channels viz. mobile,
internet, print and voice. The product was then again re-campaigned in April-2014 with

Ranbir Kapoor as its brand ambassador. With the largest marketing budget of 350 crores in
2015 the company currently works with two million SMEs across India, and has set a target
to reach 10 million SMEs in a couple of years across the country. The company AskMe.com
majorly works on two verticals as of now which are:
1. Askme.com, which is local search engine for classified searches.
2. Askmebazaar.com which is an e-commerce website dealing in non-perishable product
items.
The company has its presence throughout the country and is planning to expand its operations
in countries like Malaysia, South Africa and Dubai.
Top Management

CEO Mr. JaspreetBindra

Board Members Mr. Ramesh Gupta (Chairman and Managing Director)

Mr. P.B. Rajesh (Sales Manager)

Size of the organization

Turnover INR 500 Crore

No. of employees 5000 employees

Geographical Spread 100 cities (approx.)

Vision
"Aim higher to explore new horizons of technological innovations & create new quality
benchmarks." And help forward-thinking companies achieve and surpass their business goals.
Mission
Our mission is fully powered with innovative ideas & state-of-art technologies, to provide
easy access to clients & to promote business entities to tap new world of potential customers
& improve their profit margins with timely interaction with clients & world recognized best

services, aiming to capture all sectors of biz world.

Objectives
AskMes objective is to help their client solution towards increasing their visibility
throughout the region to help them develop their business as well as increase their walk-ins.
The company also aims at providing the best marketing solution through its local classified
searches. Company also targets increasing the overall worth of its shareholders.
Competencies
Parent company, GetitInfomedia is into the business for past 30 years with its printed contact
dictionary called The Yellow Pages. It is the only company that is in this vertical of business.
The rich database of yellow pages and the brand name of the company is the companys most
valuable asset. AskMe is the digital version of Yellow Pages with a famous Bollywood star as
the face of the brand.
Being a well-evolved brand in metropolitan cities, the brands USP is the Multiple APL
service that the company offers. In a considerable less amount of investment, it gives client
an opportunity to have all India visibility which is not provided by any directional media
company.
Target Market
The product targets the SMEs of the country that account to about 17% of the Indian GDP.
SME is known as small and medium enterprise which an annual turnover of less than 10
crore. There are about 40 million SMEs in the country and the company targets to enroll 10
million SMEs by the end of 2018.

FUTURE STRATEGIES
The biggest challenge for the company is convincing the client for the enrolling on the
service it provides as well maintaining the service to already existing clients. . Moreover,
most of the time, potential applicants learn about the online advertising services primarily
when they approach the ad agency, and they know very little about AskMe as a service
provider in this domain. Therefore, more brand awareness is needed for AskMe, as this will

attract more clients.

Apart from brand awareness, AskMe is planning to focus on giving leads to their clients, like
other competitors such as JustDial. Also, without considerable number of leads, the cost of
the service is more compared to competitors. Therefore, providing leads to clients gives
AskMe a competitive advantage over its competitors.
After sale service is also one of the major future strategy of AskMe. Since, AskMe is a new
organization, therefore, strong after sales service is the major turnover. This requires a huge
dedication from the service and operation team to meet the market expectations of the clients
in terms of after sales services which is already set by competitors.
AskMe is also dedicated in recruiting qualified marketing personnel and providing
appropriate training to them as well as current employees so that they will not make any
haphazard promises of leads and business to the clients that will create brand impression
about the company. This will also help in bringing dedication among current employees.
AskMe is also looking forward to make itself strong in Mobile application platform by
making it more user friendly, as well as putting efforts in making voice portal more effective
by giving response quickly.

ASKME LAUNCHING
AskMe.com has recently launched six new services for the country, of which only AskMe
Premium Listing is the only product that generates revenue for the company. Therefore, to
know the effectiveness of one of its services (APL), the company did a market research. The
research was based on four parameters: price of the service, brand recall, brand awareness,
and utility of the service.
Research Hypothesis
Based on the objectives, the market view about the AskMe.com can be positive and negative
both. Therefore, the hypothesis was:
H1: Price of the services determines the market view of the AskMe.

H2: Brand Recall of the AskMe determines the Market view.

H3: Brand Awareness of the AskMe determines the Market view.
H4: Usability of services predicts the market view.

Research Design
The research was the exploratory type (quantitative) of research based on primary data. The
data was collected by conducting questionnaire survey across the target market of the
AskMe.com. The data collected help the organizations to examine how price, brand recall,
brand awareness and utilization of the services plays a vital in determining the factors that
influence the positivity and negativity of the market view of AskMe. The sample population
consists of the respondent who are the potential customers of the AskMe services, that is,
Customers for APL (AskMe Premium Listing). This research is based on a sample size of
107.
Based on the survey, the analysis of APL was by hypothesis testing was conducted and we
came up with following results:

The premium charged for the service is priced correctly and the product gives good

value for money to the consumer.

People who have atleast heard the name of the product or have used it were easily

able to recall the name of the brand and the brand name was there in top five recalls.
Brand awareness is very low i.e. not many people have heard such kind of product

before. Here both Category awareness and Brand awareness was less.
Usability of the APL service is excellent i.e. whoever has used the product is very
much satisfied and they have always found what they were looking for via askme,
also the information provided was very much updated and accurate.

Problem:
Based on the data collected, the company needs to decide as to how will it go about
increasing the brand awareness? What kind of campaign does it need to undertake based on
its current customer profile? Does it need to modify its product or prune any of them? Should

it start charging even for those products which are free? If yes, then which and why?

EXHIBIT 1
Service offered by AskMe
1. Askme Premium Listing
The first was the companys flagship product i.e. AskMe Premium Listing. The listing enrolls
at a cost of 6500/- rupees plus taxes which comes around to 7303/- rupees for one year
listing. The following are the services that the company promises to the premium listers.
1. Presence on the national voice portal i.e. 0444-444-4444
2. Presence on the website of the search engine i.e. askme.com
3. Presence on the mobile application of askme.com
4. WSP i.e. web starter page of the firm on its own name
5. Synchronizing the WSPs with google with ratings and reviews options
6. Sharing the contact details of the searchers looking for that segment to the premium
lister
7. Moreover sharing the contact details of the listers to the searchers when they make a
particular segment search
8. Service of relevant updates on web starter page on the request of the client.

2. AskmeBazaar Listing
The second product that the company deals is the askmebazaar listing. Askmebazaar.com is
an e-commerce website and an online portal that gives chance to small SMEs to get
registered and sell their products online. The registration is free of cost for askmebazaar.com,
the seller has to just fill up a seller enrollment form where he has to share his TIN and PAN
numbers of enrollment. Askmebazaar.com takes transaction cost and logistics cost from the
client in case of any sale. The transaction cost is 7% for regular items and 4% for electronic
goods. Logistics cost varies depending on the weight of the product i.e. from 0-500g the cost
is 45 rupees, 500g-5kg cost is 100 rupees, 5kg-20kg cost is 20 rupees additional per kg plus
100 rupees base, for more than 20 kg the seller has to make its own arrangements.

3. AskMe Free Listing

The third product is askme free listing. When any client is not interested in paid listing the
company provides the service of free listing where it offers presence on the three portals
without any premium services.
4. SMS Marketing and Email Marketing
Moreover, the company also provides services like SMS marketing and Email Marketing.
The cost of the products depends upon the type of slab the client enrolls in depending upon
his requirement. Company has a good amount of data because of its products called Yellow
Pages. The target market is decided by the client and is communicated to the company. This
is the platform where the client promotes its business through SMS and Email to the target
market. For example for education centers, the target is students and parents between the ages
of 35-50 years. The client enrolls in the particular slab that has different number of messages
that the client can promote. The client then frames the promotion message and hand it over to
the company which then shoots the message to the asked upon target market. Thus, it is also a
way a particular business can be promoted.
5. Independent Distributors Investments
The company also enrolls in independent distributors who invest in the company and buys
askme premium listings which are then sold to the individual clients through distributors. The
distributor is given certain incentive by the company on sales of my askme premium listing.
6. AskMe Multiple Listings
Last but not the least; company has brought in brand new offering called Multiple AskMe
Premium Listings. In Multiple APL, a client can promote his business in different parts of the
country though not based in that particular area. The concept after this is many SMEs have
business in different parts of the country though not based there so with the help of Multi
APL the client can promote its business in that areas as well. Here the company creates a

virtual address of the organization in the area where it is not present which is linked to the
original address of the organization. For example if any education center is based in Vastrapur
area of Ahmedabad city and wants to promote the business in entire Ahmedabad, in this case
the client is offered Multiple APLs. The organization is tagged to each and every pincode of
the city, thus if search is generated in any area of the city the lead goes to the organization.
This product eliminates the limitations of conventional promotional media of limited
visibility. Moreover, it gives an opportunity to the client to promote their business throughout
the country. The company also offers lucrative offers for multi APLs where prices per APL
reduces with increase in number of APLs enrolled. The price for single APL is 6500 while for
2-5 APLs it is 5500, 5-20 APLs it is 5000, 20-50 APLs it is 4500 and so one different slabs
have been designed. For APLs more than 300, the company subjected offers a price of 1500
per APL subjected to negotiation. Thus per APL cost is sliced down to a large extent.

EXHIBIT 2
Presentations of Data
1. AskMe.com provide its services in cheaper price as compared to other competitors.

Cheaper price as comapred to competitor

5% 8%
21%

37%

29%

Strongly Disagree

Disagree

Agree

Strongly Agree

Neither

2. I find the AskMe.com APL price reasonable.

AskMe.com APL price is reasonable

11% 9%
Strongly Disagree

Disagree

40%

14% Agree
Neither

Strongly Agree

25%

3. The price of the services AskMe.com provides seems to be economical in front of the
quality services they provide.

Economical as compared to the qaulity of service

14% 11%
16%

36%

23%

Strongly Disagree

Disagree

Agree

Strongly Agree

Neither

4. I can identify AskMe.com among some of the important brands.

Identify AskMe among other brands

12%7%
14%

46%

21%

Strongly Disagree

Disagree

Agree

Strongly Agree

Neither

5. I know Askme.com is a brand that provides online advertisement platform to other

businesses.

I know Askme.com as an online advertisement platform

10% 12%
Strongly Disagree Disagree Neither Agree Strongly Agree
17%

40%
21%

6. I know Askme.com is a brand under GetitInfomedia Group.

Askme.com is a brand of Getit Infomedia

8% 5%
Strongly Disagree

Disagree

15%
Neither Agree

Strongly Agree

19%

53%

7. I am aware of AskMe.com

I am aware of AskMe.com

Strongly Disagree

8% 17%
14%
Disagree
Neither

Agree

Strongly Agree

19%
42%

8. I can quickly recall logo of AskMe.com

I can quickly recall logo of AskMe.com

5%

Strongly Disagree

14%

Disagree

23%

Neither

16%
42%

9. I know what AskMe.com business is.

Agree

Strongly Agree

I know the business of AskMe.com

Strongly Disagree

5% 17%
Disagree Neither

17%

22%

Agree

Strongly Agree

39%

10. Using AskMe.com enables me to manage business operation in an efficient way.

AskMe.com makes business operations efficient

15% 6%
Strongly Disagree

Disagree

21% Agree
Neither

Strongly Agree

16%

43%

11. Using AskMe.com allow me to advertise my business online.

AskMe.com advertise business online

4%

Strongly Disagree

18%
19%
Disagree Neither

Agree

Strongly Agree

17%
43%

12. Using AskMe.com enables me in getting right customers globally.

AskMe.com helps getting customer

Strongly Disagree

17% 7%
19% Agree
Disagree Neither

Strongly Agree

11%

47%

13. The AskMe.com is regarded as the best benchmark of online advertisement provider.

AskMe.com is the benchmark of online ad provider

Strongly Disagree

26%
Disagree

5%
21% Agree
Neither

Strongly Agree

16%

33%

14. The AskMe.com is professional about Clients reputation.

AskMe.com is professional about Clients reputation

Strongly Disagree

24%
Disagree

11%
Neither
14% Agree

Strongly Agree

15%

36%

15. Using AskMe.com allow me to advertise my business online.

AskMe.com allow me to advertise my business online

5%

19%
15%
Strongly Disagree Disagree Neither Agree Strongly Agree
22%

39%