LinkedIn not to impact Naukri's rev in any way: Info Edge

LinkedIn has not been impacting our revenues in any way, said Hitesh Oberoi, chief executive officer and managing director of Info Edge. Among many small website businesses, he is very bullish on 99acres.com, which deals with the realty space. Another business He is positive about is Shiksha.com, which is a education site.

Talking about the sectorial hiring process, Oberoi indicated that the IT services were very strong till the first half of this year. However, sectors like telecom, insurance, real estate, automobiles and to some extent financial services saw a slowdown.

Here is the edited transcript of his interview to CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: What are you expecting in terms of revival in the job market? Is there any possibility in the near-term? If this scenario remains cautious, how will you negotiate this slow down because Naukri.com is your biggest cash generator?

A: The job scene looks a little slow right now. We were alright till the first half of this year, but it seems to be a little slow at this point in time. It is not as bad as it was three years ago, when the market tanked in 2008. The high has slowed down a little bit and the companies are being a little more cautious. We are still growing, but at a slower rate than last year.

Q: In the micro level, you are facing competition from spaces like LinkedIn, and traditional media newspaper and their classifieds that are now moving online. Could there be a depression on your revenue because of this competition?

A: Not really because we have been competing with these companies for a long time now. LinkedIn is new, but still very small in India. They are not impacting our revenues in any way. They are yet to scale up in a very big way in India.

People are still buying our products and are using LinkedIn differently from how they use Naukri. They might reduce in to somebody else's share, but not our share at this point in time.

As far as the newspapers and their portals are concerned, we have strengthened our positions in the last one to one-and-a-half years. We had from a 48% traffic share before the slowdown in October 2008. Our share has been hovering around 57-58% for the last few months. In that market, we consolidated our positions. We haven't weakened our position at all.

Q: You have a lot of the other smaller industry businesses. Which businesses has scaled up because aside of 99acres and Naukri.com, others are yet to make a significant presence? Which of your businesses has the potential to scale up better?

A: We are very bullish on 99acres because it is a huge market. The amount of money spend offline in real estate is huge. It is a very big category and we are leading it. We are growing rapidly as well. Last year, we grew at 70% and this year in the first half despite the slowdown, we grew at about 45%. We are very bullish on 99acres.

In addition to 99acres, we operate into another big category education though the business is small. We site is called Shiksha.com, which helps students with education advice and admission. It is a small site at this point in time and has been growing well. In the offline space, education is the largest category in print.

Q: Sectorally, where is the hiring good and where is the hiring distinctly lower compared to the past few quarters?

A: This is a big change compared to last year. Last year, almost all sectors did well. This year, some sectors faired badly, while some were still strong. Till the first half of this year, IT services were very strong. We saw a slowdown in sectors like telecom, insurance, real estate, automobiles and to some extent financial services.

IT enable services and some of the other sectors like engineering did very well in the first half of this year. I hear from the market that IT companies are still hiring. There are some product companies, which have a lot of business in the cloud, and are developing products for the internet and hiring as well.

There are some companies where the business has been hurt because they do not have a product to compete with some cloud offerings of competitors.