BigAdda gives in

Take a look at the picture beside. I call it the "Market Power of Google". The picture is a web page of Zapak.com which happens to be a full-service software gaming entertainment company and a part of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG), flaunting Google's ad serving program, AdSense.

About ADAG

Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group is among India's top three private sector business houses, with a market capitalization of Rs. 100,000 crore (US$ 22 billion), net assets in excess of Rs 31,500 crore (US$ 7 billion), and net worth to the tune of Rs 27,500 crore (US$ 6 billion). The group has a customer base of over 50 million, the largest in India, and a shareholder base of over 8 million, among the largest in the world. Through its products and services, the Reliance - ADA Group touches the life of 1 in 10 Indians every single day. The business presence of the Group extends to over 6,000 towns and 300,000 villages in India, and 5 continents across the world. The interests of the Group range from communications (Reliance Communications) and financial services (Reliance Capital Ltd), to generation, transmission and distribution of power (Reliance Energy), infrastructure and entertainment.


Anil Dhirubhai Ambani's net worth alone is estimated to be around US$18.2 billion as of 2007 whereas Google's total assets and net income are estimated to be US$25.335 billion and US$4.203 billion respectively for the same period. His groups' total assets can outdo Google's numbers hands down.


Then why AdSense on Zapak?


I'm not against AdSense and I accept that it is a great way to make revenue for any website. Moreover, the revenues will only be higher if it has a large user base. And Zapak being the premier online gaming site in India has no dearth of users, be it registered ones or guests. But Zapak endorsing AdSense? Unbelievable! Reliance has set benchmarks and seen remarkable growth even after the split up. They have a legacy of their own and it's their individuality that has kept them going. Theirs is an amazing rags to riches story and taught us to Dream Big. Now, have they lost it? It may seem no big deal but for a huge corporate entity like Reliance, it is. Mozy created waves when it landed a multi-million dollar deal with GE for providing online storage solution. The question was: How could a huge corporate like GE trust an outside service for protecting it's sensitive data? This case is a bit different however because both GE and Mozy are leaders in their respective fields. But in our case, both belong to the same field. Both Google and Zapak are battling it out for the same space, to attract more audience. Google is untouchable as the height it has reached is tremendous. The purpose of Zapak was to break that myth atleast in India. Instead, Zapak sort of resounded the fact that it was Google which was dominant of the two. Zapak just lost out the edge to Google in the initial stage itself.


Zapak isn't the only portal on offer from ADAG. The group has been head over heels promoting BigAdda.com, an Indian Social Networking and blogging site similar to Google's Orkut with television commercials, banners, web ads and all sorts of possible marketing techniques. BigAdda.com is expected to compete head on with Orkut and overtake its leadership in the Social Networking circuit in India in the coming years. But here's the messed up part. Even BigAdda endorses Google AdSense.


Compared to Orkut, BigAdda is a small fry. And to overtake such a mammoth competitor requires more than just investment and publicity. It seems now that they have given in to Google's Market Leadership. What else do you say when one endorses his competitors product? The Ambanis have been successful in all the ventures that they have started. Success literally means Leadership for them, not mere profits. But nobody is quite sure about BigAdda. Online marketing is a totally different ball game. It's totally different from Telecommunications, Energy or Capital Investment. It's big time they realize that short term returns shouldn't be their objective. For long term sustenance of the portal, it's important that it has it's own unique identity. And co-branding with Google doesn't help in acquiring niche audience. It might end up like Yahoo! (another case of market expansion over product improvement), receiving unsolicited bids from competitor. And Google has been very successful in acquiring entities for its growth. Really don't hope to see BigAdda in Google's kitty. Zapak has started to create some flutters in the Indian web sphere and only time can tell where BigAdda is headed.


Hope BigAdda turns out to be another Reliance success story.


UPDATE: It seems Zapak has removed all Google from its pages. But still BigAdda hasn't.