Yogesh Bansal moved to India in 2006 and started ApnaCircle.com with a vision to make it a truly mega brand. Before starting ApnaCircle.com, he spent significant time in finding market intelligence by market research on the domain. Before shifting to India, he had founded couple of start ups both in USA as well as in India. Before becoming an entrepreneur, he worked with McKesson Inc, USA. In an exclusive interview with India Digital Review, Bansal shares his plans about growing the ApnaCircle brand in India.

From a sailor to a digital entrepreneur, how was the journey?

From childhood, I always wanted to do something different. During that time like any typical Indian family, my family also wanted me to become an engineer, doctor or go for civil services. Get a Monday to Saturday job, work nine to five and get satisfied. My father was a public servant, I saw him with a very settled life with similar routine. I wanted to do something different, I gave entrance exam of various institutions and got selected for most of them and also gave entrance for Nautical Science of S. P. Jain Institute of Management and Research and went to Mumbai where I was selected. I saw it as an opportunity to travel around the world besides getting a handsome salary, after completing my course there I got job in Larson and Toubro then I started sailing and sailed for more than two years. But there was nothing new to be done, there were some checklists and I got bored. It was not my cup of tea in the long term but in short term I really enjoyed it as I travelled around the world, met lot of people, different kinds of society, etc.

In 1997 after I completed my Masters in IT and Finance from the University of North Carolina and started working with Mckesson Inc. There, I developed a software called Paragon for a hospital information system and worked on the technology during the Y2K problems. In 1998, a colleague and I conceptualised and developed an online social network just for fun. Post that, I founded GeoRapid Inc. With GeoRapid I realised the credibility and the need for email marketing tools, which subsequently led me to my next big innovations in the dotcom business. With hands-on experience gathered in the US, I moved to India in 2006 with a vision to generate a unique and innovative platform for Indian consumers; I observed the Indian population, especially the chunk of youth that was vividly expanding the horizon of dotcom industry in the country. During my research, I found various users’ insights, out of which the most highlighted fact was the Indian youth’s inclination towards career and friends. Having considered the potential of the fact, combined with the rise of social networking in the country, my desire was to create something which caters to both — friends and career. This finally laid the foundation of ApnaCircle.com.

In 2007 Viadeo came to us and we started discussing, they had Tianji in China.

At that time, there was lot of competition among social networking sites as Hi5, MySpace, Facebook was coming, Orkut was big in India not that big in Europe. We were realising to move to pure professional networking from just a social networking and we realised that people did not want to maintain multiple profile on social networking. But, business networking is different as in social networking you want to interact with your friend and acquaintances but in business networking you want to interact with strangers for some common goal, etc. You don’t mind creating different profile because you are investing in yourself. So that’s my vision and that of founder of Viadeo than I joined the group.

Now, we are part of a global company and we have three brands Viadeo.com, Tianji.com and Apnacircle.com with multi-local strategy and total group has 45 million users and we are positioned number two after LinkedIn. The difference between LinkedIn and us is that we are multi-local by the name itself. Second thing is we are more catering to youth and with that we say we bring bottom-top approach whereas LinkedIn’s approach is top-bottom. That is the reason when you go to our site we have more youth profile whereas LinkedIn you find more CXOs, I believe they do lot of overlapping, 60 per cent of people who have profile on ApnaCircle also have profile on LinkedIn and they want to interact with Europe because we are no. 1 in Europe, NO.1 in China. LinkedIn is more into English countries US, UK, Australia and in India being an English country by itself they have been accepted here. But, there is no substitute, so if there is a substitute, while now we have ApnaCircle in India which can cater to your needs and that’s the strategy we are adopting.      

What is your revenue generation model in India?

The revenue generation model has not started in India, the reason being is that right now we are focussed on to get user and activity done on the site. For that reason you would see lot of changes being done on our website because the composite values of our products are not complete yet.  So, before I start charging my users I want to make sure that my value process is in place so that we can charge them because if you charge X amount of money you will have to provide 5X value to them. When we compare ourselves with LinkedIn, we have touched five per cent of innovation and 95 per cent is still has to come along in many ways. The key ways will be premium membership which is the biggest part, second is the HR recruitment, third is branding advertisement, fourth is social app because it provides different options of career that has become really big in Europe and I think it’s going to become huge in India.

Viadeo had raised $32 million to boost its growth in emerging markets. How are you looking to use the funding in India?

Globally what has been decided is that we are going to focus on two things, one is Viadeo Europe which is the cash cow for us and second is we are going to focus on China, because we have clear majority there as we have 12 million users and are adding half a million user every month. Whereas LinkedIn has only 1 to 1.5 Million users in China we could see a clear lead there.

Right now what are your plans on getting more users to ApnaCircle?

There is a viral loop in place where a person invites other people and then the person completes his profile and then again writes, so we are focusing on delivering more value. Second thing is we are concentrating on SEO, when a person signs up on ApnaCircle the best thing is he needs to get searched and the biggest advantage is branding yourself and that’s what professional networking is. You want to come to Apna Circlebecause you get better branding and because of this lot of people are coming on ApnaCircle.

It was launched in 2007, what were the initial ways of getting customers?

We did lot of Gorilla Marketing. As I was totally bankrupt because I invested all of my money in ApnaCircle and it was a do or die situation, I was focussing on viral loop. Third thing I used was a lot of PR and was talking to lot of VCs at the same time and never believed in it at that time because at that time nobody believed in social networking sites. Then we tied up with Times of India and through that got lot of traction and then we got Viadeo and got the critical masses.     

Does LinkedIn’s growth in India worry you?

Lets go backwards in 2006, at that time the social media was just Hi5, now you don’t use Hi5 at all. It clearly shows that first movers don’t have advantage in social media, if it was true then MySpace wouldn’t have died and Facebook brought all the element together and the biggest point about social media is you cannot stop innovating, the day you stop innovating you are dead.

Today Facebook looked at users’ need and worked on their needs. That’s the beauty of internet nothing stops, nothing is permanent it is a race against innovation and providing more value and creating connection and communication between people more effectively.

You have seen the Indian social media consumer closely. What is your take on the growth of social media consumers in India?

There are not radical changes, first of all you have understand that ¾ of the population if India is very young and the second thing is Indians love to share and they want to speak out. It’s just the way they now understand that social media much more than just sharing a picture or sharing a video but the need is still there. So, now people are sharing that their presentation, article, blogs which is much more serious talks. On Twitter you feel that you are in touch with that person on day to day basis if you are following him, you feel closer to him.

I believe that social media is going to influence the buying behaviour of a person and that’s why all these FMCG companies they want to go into the social media to understand the social graph and in a way they want to influence and that is the reason they are spending so much of money into social media.

You said you are now focussing on building the product. So going forward do we see ApnaCircle acquiring any product-based company?

Why not, if somebody comes to me and tells that I have got very good applications which can be integrated in such a way which is very innovative in nature, why not? We will look at that and tell to my board of directors and we will decide together if this is workable, it’s all about collaboration and we need to collaborate.

Going forward where do you see ApnaCircle giving good competition to LinkedIn and Facebook in India?

I wish I could say that I will be able to take ApnaCircle in the list of the names that you took right now but time will tell. But as an entrepreneur, as a CEO my job is to keep innovating, keep listening, keep creating more value. Sometimes being innovative is being different and you will think differently and I believe that an entrepreneur makes 10 decisions and there are obvious ways that a person makes mistake at one or two places. Therefore my simple formula is if I do 10 things and 6-7 are right then I am doing very good job and for other entrepreneur I tell the same thing, don’t worry about failure.

Compiled by Abhay Anand