City Two Thousand (India) Ltd., a subsidiary of the UK-based City 2000, is promoting Internet advertising in India, through City 2000’s Web site.
The Indian subsidiary, which began operations from Nagpur in
Maharashtra and Bangalore, has been set up to promote Indian business
opportunities across the globe at a minimum cost.
According to Bruce King, a consultant with City 2000 in the UK, the
company would be the biggest business directory on the Internet and
would be the one-stop shop for any kind of business inquiry a person
may have.
He pointed out that while some 97 million pages were added to the
Internet in 1998, it is difficult for anyone to have their
Web sites noticed on the Internet.
However, by listing their advertisement on City 2000 with hyper links to their Web site, business people who are looking forward to more business can be
assured of several serious business visitors.
Commenting on the reasons to set up this sort of service, King
maintained that while more than 50 per cent of the information on the
Internet today pertained to sex and another 45 per cent was just
irrelevant information, only five per cent of the information was
serious.
“This is a hold we want to break into,” he said.
“If someone wants to get some information about a product and about who manufactures it, it would be difficult to browse the Internet with just the keyword and actually hit the right place for the accurate
information.” he said. “This then is where we come in.”
Indian advertisers are to be charged about Rs 20,000 (US$472) per year for a
single advertisement with a picture and a 250 word text.
The page on site will come with an e-mail link and a hyper link to
the advertiser’s Web site.
N.K. Purohit, one of the promoters of City Two Thousand (India) said
that the firm had spent a lot of money on advertising its services
in the conventional media as well as on the Internet, to make it
visible.
“We are trying to get people to think ‘Let me go to City2000.com
first and try for the info I am looking for’ and then maybe browse the
Internet,” he said.
He pointed out that its UK counterpart gets six million visitors per
month and sometimes the figure reaches even 18 to 20 million.
The Indian company is targeting 20 million hits per month by the end of
1999.
However, the Indian operations are still on a small scale and the
company has received only 300 advertisements so far.
But by hiring 10,000 independent consultants to exclusively market City2000.com and
get advertisements, this figure is expected to go up.
