In an interview to CNBC-TV18, Ramkumar Krishnamachari, CFO, Justdial shares his views on the company's Q1 results and the delay in launching its latest product SearchPlus.
Below is the verbatim transcript of Ramkumar Krishnamachari's interview with Sonia Shenoy & Latha Venkathesh on CNBC-TV18.
Sonia: When we spoke to you last we thought search plus would have been launched already, it seems to be pushed forward. Can you tell us what is the new date and what is the new reason for the delay of the launch?
A: Actually what we wanted to do was when we launch a great product, have a great user interface (UI) and which is what we are working on and it should be launched by September most likely and our belief is that better to launch with a full product with all the features and including the UI and hence this couple of months of delay but we are not – honestly we would rather wait, launch it with the right product rather than launching the not so satisfactory product.
Latha: So the one-time ad spend for search plus will take place in Q2 or in Q3? What is the change to the total spend?
A: I don’t think there is any change to the number, we believe that the ad spend should start in sometime in September so you should see the spend happen in second half of this financial year.
Sonia: So if it launches in September, what is the revenue that you forecast for the company in the second half of FY’16 and in FY’17?
A: We always maintained that it is too premature to talk about revenue from search plus at this point of time. Our idea is to introduce the product, gain traction on usage and traffic among the vast user community and then look at monetization.
We have a very clearly laid down monetization plan. We are not in a hurry to start monetizing at this point of time, definitely the monetization should start sometime later this financial year and meaningful revenue we should start coming in from FY’17 but our focus right now is to make sure that popularized product among the vast user community communicate the value proposition to them and then think about monetization.
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