lol, may be this not the right way to start a post but i just can’t help myself but laugh. I was just surfing through sites and i came across this post on alootechie, It said:
“Brijj.com, a professional networking site launched by Info Edge India (Naukri.com) in August 2007, claims to have attracted more than eight lakh professionals, including 800 CEOs and 3,000 Directors, from across India as registered members in nine months of its launch. Brijj also claims that the website gets over 5,000 average registrations a day.”
To confirm this I took the pain and registered myself on brijj.com. Registration was quite simple not asking too many questions, but most of them were mandatory. I reached the home page, there I saw brijj.com boasting bout their 800+ CEO list, the first sight of it made fan of brijj.com thinking that these guys are keeping things transparent. But when I saw the list… i was no more a fan, my hero disappointed me!!! Out of those 800+ CEO list, there are hardly some double digit CEOs that are CEOs in actual sense, on the rest i do not want to comment, and a lot of CEOs are Self Employed!!!
The other thing that i came across is the cool NEW section on brijj.com, the “Ask & Answer” section. With 800,000+ registered users and 5,000 new users registering everyday, there are only 95 questions asked till date (as of 22nd June08). Most of the questions asked are dumb, and a lot of queries on job hunt. Looks like a lot of people from Naukri.com who failed in getting a job, have shifted to brijj.com thinking that at least here they would be successful. I have not seen more than 2 responses to any query, and most of the answers are given by brijj.com team.
Guys you wont believe this. brijj.com has got some funda of paid membership, one can upgrade its membership by paying amount between INR. 500 to INR. 2,000 per year and enjoy some extra shitty benefits. This too much to handle, are they like trying to compare themselves to linkedin.com..!!! Well, they have at least copied the linkedin.com concept very well. And that is not all that they have copied. Check out burrp.com and you would realize what else they have copied.
Someone named “Morpher” commented on the post by alootechie saiying, “Brijj is a clone of xing.com .. page by page, word by word. Shows how Naukri is indifferent and not-dedicated to this product.”
To read the post on alootechie.com Click Here
Well well well…. i do not want to comment any further… I would just say that the figures boasted by Info Edge India are difficult to believe at this point of time even if they are right . I mean its only been about 10 months since it was launched (i.e. August 2007) and there is no proof to support the figures.
I wish all the very best to the brijj.com team to reach level that they are claiming to be at, at this point of time.
23/06/2008 at 3:39 pm Permalink
Riyaz
Thanks for the very useful feedback.
The numbers we have quoted in our press release are absolutely true.
As a public company we do not have the luxury of being less than truthful.
Brijj does have over 800,000 registrations and they are growing at over 5000 a day.
And so far we have not spent even a rupee on promotion.
The fact is that with the huge amount of traffic on naukri, jeevansathi and 99acres it is easy for us to get one time registrations.
The challenge lies in getting repeat visits from registered users, getting people to build their networks and improving the quality of the registered user base. This is a much harder thing to do.
And we have said as much in our press release.
Our next agenda is two fold.
First to market the site to our registered users so as improve engagement.
Second a continuous product improvement agenda so as to differentiate the Brijj offering from other sites.
So hopefully Brijj users will see some activity in these two areas in the coming weeks and months.
And as and when we succeed in doing that – the next stage will be monetisation.
Meanwhile do keep the feedback coming.
Sanjeev
25/06/2008 at 7:47 pm Permalink
@ Sanjeev
Thanks Sanjeev for clarifying.
I do believe naukri’s number’s are more credible than rest of Internet crowd in the market.
I guess getting repeated visits is the challenge all business social networks face,would be interesting to see how the community evolve over brijj.
Riz