Alok Kejriwal

During the heydays of the dot-com boom in India, entertainment sites were launched dime-a-dozen, but most of them failed to survive the bloodbath in 2001. Names like chaitime, eindia, sawaal, may be history today, but Contest2win (C2W) has not only proved an exception to this rule, but has witnessed tremendous growth. Today C2W operates in China, apart from India, with plans to launch in Korea and Japan are on the anvil.

Alok Kejriwal, the young CEO, recounts the humble beginnings when he spent Rs 5,000 to purchase the domain name and design the basic site, following which an amount in excess of $2.5 million has been invested in both C2W India and China by eVentures, ICICI Venture and Softbank. The important milestones during this three-year sojourn: Revenues of Rs 700,000 in 1999-2000, Rs 3.01 crore in 2000-01 and Rs 3.22 crore in 2001-02. The cashflow in the last quarter was Rs 75,000,000. In 2001, C2W launched its China version and in 14 months since inception, the revenue run rate almost matches India’s, the user base at 11,20,000 is larger than India’s 7,63,000 and the brand relationships exceed 50. The China site is expected to break even next quarter, while the Indian site did so in 2002.

Brand relationships seem to be the essence of the business model that Contest2win follows. Explains Kejriwal, “Our revenue model is about charging brands for involving consumers. So, if we do a contest in which 30,000 consumers play for five minutes with a brand, we are delivering 150,000 minutes of intense involvement to the brand owners. Contests currently generate 80 percent of our revenue.”

Kejriwal feels that C2W has redefined interactive communication, pushing the envelope from interruption marketing (which is TV and print) towards entertainment marketing, which means involving consumers with content rather than thrusting ads which ride on content. He confidently predicts that Contest2win will reach Rs 3.5 crore by next year and Rs 5-6 crore by the year after.

Unlike many other dot-coms who spent extravagantly on ads and brand building, Kejriwal is particularly cautious on expenses and never advertises as he believes the Net is all about viral marketing. Unlike others, the sentiment at C2W from the beginning is towards cutting out cost frills. For instance, Kejriwal uses a local cellphone SIM card instead of a roaming one. In the words of its CEO, Contest2win is a MNC with Marwari values a mantra which can take it a long way.