VSS Mani, Started A Business On “Wedding Planning” But Was Not Satisfied And Founded Justdial.
Justdial is an Indian start-up founded in 1996 for offering the public a huge database for conducting a local search. The website of Justdial contains information about any particular company or service from contact number, address, etc. to the details of service provided across the country. So, anyone can look up the website or mobile app of Justdial to find information about any local service that we usually don’t get on the internet. Justdial has more than 10,000 employees and has offices all over the country, like in New Delhi, Kolkata, Pune, Chennai, Chandigarh, etc. Its headquarters is based in Mumbai, India, and the majority of its stake is currently owned by Reliance Retail, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited.
About Justdial
VSS Mani is the founder and CEO of Justdial. The company offers local search as its primary service and apart from that it has two other services, “Justdial Social” and “Search Plus Service.” The former is a service that involves aggregating content from various social media websites, news sources, etc and the latter is responsible for managing online transactions through various apps. Justdial has also entered foreign markets and that includes opening international offices in UAE, UK, USA, and Canada. In India, the company has a total of fifteen offices.
Justdial can be accessed from both mobile and computers. Apart from the official website of the company, it has launched individual mobile apps for Android, iOS, and Blackberry. After Justdial was launched it focussed on every aspect of growth, from expanding to new overseas markets to strengthening the company’s SME relationships. Some of the major investors of the company are SAIF Partners, Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global, SAP Ventures, etc.
History
VSS Mani, before founding Justdial, had several other business ideas but none of them survived in the market for a long time. Mani agrees that he has learned from the mistakes of his past business endeavors and finally made Justdial a successful brand. When Mani had the idea to develop a website with a huge database, he was working for a yellow page company. This was during the late 1980s when he thought of replacing the yellow pages with a huge database. The users will have access to the database so that they can call any service provider and receive the necessary information. Today, Justdial has a database of more than 29 million listings and over 500,000 active paid campaigns.
Growth and Expansion
Though Justdial was officially launched in 1996, Mani started working on the idea in 1994 with an investment of 50,000 rupees. He rented a garage and some PCs, borrowed furniture to start the groundwork, and also hired 5-6 employees. Justdial became a popular website within a few years and just a decade later the company launched an internet and mobile version of the database, Justdial.com. In 2011, the company was able to raise $10 million followed by $57 million in the next year. All the fundings were judiciously invested to launch new products, develop the brand, and expand geographically.
Justdial decided to go public in 2013 and out of the total 17.3 million shares, 13.5 million were offered to the public. The rest of the shares were given to the previous investors of the company at a rate of 530 rupees per share. The share price of Justdial saw many ups and downs as it went as high as 1894 rupees in August 2014 and then the next year decreased to a triple-digit number. In July 2021, Reliance Retail acquired a 66.95% stake in the company for 3,497 crore rupees. After these acquisitions, Reliance got access to the 25-year old database of the company and VSS Mani withheld his position as the CEO and MD of Justdial.
About the Founder
VSS Mani was born in Jamshedpur and was raised in Calcutta (now Kolkata). He pursued commerce for higher studies and founded three organizations. Mani’s entrepreneurial journey started with “AskMe” but due to improper timing, the business failed shortly. He also started a business on “Wedding Planning” but was not satisfied with the business model or the profit margin. Later with proper business strategies and thorough research, he founded Justdial and made it a huge success.
Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more