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It was the time when incoming calls on the mobile phone were also charged. If
you were in the US, and you had friends calling you just to know where you were
hanging out or what you planned to do over the weekend, for example; still it
meant a considerably large bill. A victim of such friendly and harmless
inquiries, Yogesh Bansal with his friends thought of creating a networking site
of sorts, really a basic page saying – this is what we are doing, and allowing
people to join. That was the first spark of ‘out of the box thinking’ and
entrepreneurial approach while still in the US. Worth mention here is that the
small page they created was later bought out, and the year was 1998.
After 9 years in the US, Yogesh Bansal returned to India with a vision, and
realised that there had been a sea-change in the minds of young India that was
more to be felt than to be seen. People were starting to go ‘e’ with a bit of
‘Hi5’ and other sites. Yogesh had a mind to give shape to his vision with a
venture that would be a value-add and as well would have a positive impact by
helping to give people what they required. So he set about forming a team and
getting into researches and focus studies to first understand what people really
wanted. What he endeavoured to understand, first, was the level of awareness of
the population. What does a person typically want when he goes to a networking
site; what does he expect versus what is offered; does he understand what
networking sites are; what are social and professional networking; or what is
passive job seeking; what does he do with friends on the internet, or with
family, for that matter – were the questions he typically posed.
The results of this survey were a little surprising for him. Young Indians rated
Career as their top priority followed by Friends and Family. India has a very
young population. People of the age of 35 and below are in the millions. The
studies also revealed that in India, the youth could not wholly relate to the
existing sites which were merely for professional networking.
To understand this incline and interest, and to be able to build something to
facilitate the youth’s requirements, Yogesh conducted further research which
proved his belief that professional networking coupled with social networking
was a definite success recipe. Thus ApnaCircle.com was born, catering to
professional networking with social common elements imbibed in it. “The idea was
Career and Friends with Localisation. For the youth to get involved, and also
for the critical mass on the site you need social elements. I saw a niche and I
knew this was what they wanted.”
The team started getting built, the company was registered, and in October 2007,
ApnaCircle.com had its soft launch. The response, as Yogesh says, was very
‘interesting‘. People were not merely coming onboard, but users were also giving
a lot of feedback. Yogesh made sure the feedback was documented, and
incorporating their requirements in the form of added features on the site
started giving it a new growth path. In the beginning, with new functionalities
being added on a regular basis, the team was doing production releases every two
weeks. “The users have a big contribution in making the site what it slowly
transformed into. Localisation in the form of local elements and requirements of
the Indian populace was taken care of by the users themselves through regular
feedback. The site started taking off and growing in popularity in leaps and
bounds” opines Yogesh.
As a company, ApnaCircle has been known to have an uncanny ability to read ahead
and adapt itself to derive maximum advantage. Users can actively network,
micro-blog and participate in the Q&A sessions with experts. The site is crafted
to provide a perfect professional network. Like any professional networking site
worth its salt, it helps you widen your circle of contacts and make you more
visible to industry professionals and experts. As the brain behind the project,
Yogesh Bansal has been lauded by many industry leaders and publications for his
strategy, his ability to drive an entrepreneurial culture, and his warm-hearted,
straight-talking approach. Before shifting to India, Yogesh had founded couple
of start ups both in USA as well as in India.
Going Global
Yogesh received a call from the CEO of Viadeo, which had started as a
professional networking company in Europe, based in France. They raised a VC
(venture capital) round, post which their spread increased. Recently it merged
with Tianji.com, the premier Chinese professional networking site. In their
discussions, their visions came out to be very similar, “We felt like we were
mirroring ideas,” as Yogesh puts it. Be it going global but staying local, in
merging and being a united front than competing, the need for critical mass,
etc., the thoughts and vision being so alike, they decided it would be better to
merge and work as a team. Thus, ApnaCircle of India merged with Viadeo of Europe
and Tianji of China in 2009. What it gave them was an edge, in terms of the
critical mass (which is akin to going to a party with 2 people vis-à-vis a party
with 50 people; the latter being the one with critical mass), and brought, as
Yogesh puts it “A kind of differentiation of China, India and Europe. Today as a
merged entity we are the top – in China and Europe, and number 2 in India”.
These mergers have enabled the Indian users to interact with more evolved
consumers from Europe, China and other parts of the globe.
Networking, whichever sort it may be, is also about managing a lot of address
books. ApnaCircle-Viadeo-Tianji acquired Unyk, a Canadian social networking site
based in Montreal, to grow the market organically. Unyk’s smart address book and
synchronization technology would further act as value addition to ApnaCircle
members, Yogesh opines. At present the combined entity boasts of a robust 30
million users around the world with half a million users being added every month
and is number 2 worldwide, after Linkedin. It is cash-flow positive, a major
portion of the revenue being generated from premium memberships, advertising
being low on priority, as a policy matter. Users on ApnaCircle.com are at about
1.4 million with about 100,000 users being added every month.
The interesting factor here is the positioning of the combined entity. Each of
the three entities has retained its own domain name and localized content and
offerings, with the advantage being that it is present as much at home, yet with
a vastly increased scope, being connected to the other two platforms worldwide.
Hence, the user has the local feel but global reach! A technology outfit, the
Indian entity has 31 employees with the combined worldwide entity having a
combined strength of about 180 employees, with a lot of cross border projects
and activities that expose people to cross cultural experiences.
Today, be it a candidate or companies, both have a presence on multiple
platforms simply in order to increase the probability – of getting noticed and
of noticing the right people, respectively. The individual would like to create,
what is rightly called his own Brand which is growing as a powerful a tool,
which also helps head hunters make the right fit for the positions in their
organisations.
The importance that professional and social networking has gained in the world
today is common knowledge. ApnaCircle, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc. are
just the icing on the cake, the few grossly popular sites catering to this
phenomenon. But the brand they help build, is growing stronger, especially when
it comes to recruitments. Hence, whether it is your first job, switching
careers, re-entering the job market after an extended absence or simply creating
a brand for yourself, networking is the key. With a vision to become number one
by replacing all existing professional and social networking sites as the place
to be in, whenever a person thinks of networking, ApnaCircle seems to be on the
path to achieve its glories.
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