Archive for February, 2009

H-1B abuse

Saturday, February 14th, 2009

It seems the recession and job losses are making the authorities pay a lot of attention to H-1B abuse.  Most of the arrested seem to be Indians.  There is no coverage in most Indian internet media.

Revenues of Indian Internet companies

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

I have always been curious to know the turnover  of  Indian internet companies .   This analysis of  Infoedge results is very revealing.  Some of the larger companies have more than 1000 employees and a turnover of  about 200 crores, so  per employee contribution is about 0.2 crores (20 L). I wonder what the average salaries in this sector are.

Other internet only companies

Revenue for Web 18 (based on their quarterly results) seems to be  about Rs 60 crores

Rediff – averages to be $24 million or approximately Rs 120 crores

Indiamart – Rs 38 crore / 900 employees (based on the comments)

People Interactive -  400 employees

The SEM companies may be having a higher turnover, but a large portion of the money is paid to Google and Yahoo.  These are the high profile internet companies.

There may be other internet companies with a higher turnover, or much more profitable than these companies , but if they are not publicly listed or do not want /need funding from  external sources,  their turnover will remain a secret.

For internet companies, manpower and office costs   are the major cost, the profit margins are much higher, but if you are not diversified, you could face problems during a recession.

Sale of Tripmela at eBay for less than $2500 – a fairly low price, considering the effort put in.  Making money from the Indian internet market seems to be challenging.