Quikr claims 24M unique users, 6M logging through mobile

Online classifieds site Quikr, run by Quikr Mauritius Holding Pvt Ltd, has been aggressively pushing its brand through mass media marketing campaigns after raising a huge $32 million Series E round of funding led by Warburg Pincus in May this year.

Techcircle.in caught up with Quikr management to figure out what's cooking (or selling) and going by the CEO's words, now the growth will be driven by marketing.

Pranay Chulet, co-founder and CEO, said the amount raised this year is being utilised for marketing, product development on the mobile front and team expansion. Quikr is also open to acquiring some backend infrastructure firms. "We are not really looking for companies but if an opportunity comes along we would be more focused on acquiring transaction and commerce companies," Chulet added.

He stressed that the firm is focused on marketing now, which is a change from the past when not much marketing dollars was allocated.

Sharing some statistics on how Quikr is faring in the market, Chulet said the site is now recording 'lakhs of transactions' in a month and have crossed the 24 millionunique users mark on the site. Five months ago, the firm had said it had around 17 million unique users so it has added roughly 1.4 million users a month since then.

"Our revenue channels are advertising, lead generation and premium listings and we want to stay focused on them," he said.

Currently, free users exceed the premium ones but we are hoping the numbers will increase in the latter area as well soon," Chulet added.

Mobile medium, he added, is a key focus area for Quikr now. "We want our site to be as popular on the mobile channel as online and we are working towards it. Currently, out of the 24 million users, one-fourth comes from the mobile," he said. The Androidmobile app, which was launched in July this year, has seen only 50,000 downloads so far (as opposed to 500,000 of its close rival in market, Olx).

With the Series E round of funding, comes the talk of an IPO. In an earlier conversation with Techcircle, Chulet had stated his ideas on a possible IPO soon, "An IPO is a definite possibility in the future, but we are in no rush for it. Currently, we are only focused on building our business further. However, it doesn't mean that we are not open to other possibilities like an acquisition."

(Edited by Prem Udayabhanu)