Info Edge’s business networking site, Brijj claims to have achieved a network of more than 8 lakh Indian professionals with over 800 CEOs and 3000 Directors across India in 9 months of 
existence (5000 registrations daily).
The number announcement is well timed – LinkedIn very recently announced it’s fourth round of funding that valuates the company at $1billion – and out of 23 milion users, LinkedIn’s India connection (i.e. user base) stands at 1 million.
I am not too convinced of the current business model of Brijj or Linkedin for the Indian market; and do expect some shakeup in this industry in the coming months (few disruptions are in making).
Are you on Brijj? If yes, what made you register there?
i do not understand why companies copies others ideas.
Brijj<<<<<<<<<<Linkedin
Why waste time on copied ideas, this is not a Hit Hindi movie formula where director stealing A to Z from english movies.
I didn’t know about the existence of the site until I read the article here.. seriously copying isn’t a big deal, how well the service is targeted to niche market and do they have a better business model than LinkedIn!
Sometimes this gets frustrating when start up’s just take an idea of a popular web appz and build their application above, i am not against it but making a better version and with good business model will definitely provide it a face lift!
I will be trying Brijj now though after I read your article! I was also stunned reading a blog post that covered Indian Twitter services which were like 10+ !!
If you got coders and designers to build a copy-cat application, you are not an innovator! Come up with a better unique innovations and excellent business models, thats the way to Innovate!
Cheers,
Vinay
Alright, here are some details and facts I gathered on Brijj!
People aren’t here on the site for networking with professionals (which is the main point of LinkedIn or any Social Networking sites), which is gathered from the poll result of their site which can be viewed here http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/9876/brijjds7.png !!
90% of members joining – For Searching Job! (1st Majority)
23% of members join – For Recruiting ! (2nd Majority)
Lets not look into other choices as these two values dominate, basically people register in the site thinking brijj.com as one of other Job Search site on the list.
Having 8 Lakhs (5k+ Registrations per day) isn’t a big deal if the site doesn’t cater to the needs it was started. People still see it as a job search site and nothing more.
Google Trends Reports, people who visited this site often goto Naukri.com, ClickJobs.ocm and so forth, which is more evident of the type of site this can be classified as.
Branding them as a Social Networking Sites for professional makes no sense when people don’t value it so, the polls are result answered by majority of people who register on the site. I personally selected networking and asking questions to experts but again you can see the result having “Looking for Job” as the top in its list!
Now, I really would like to know how do they differentiate themselves from other Job Search site out there? This networking feature can be integrated very easily by all the job search out there even before Brijj sees its better face in the crowd!
Its not about Numbers and Funding that shows a startup is successful, what if the goal is not accomplished?
Good Luck Brijj Team!
Brijj says “Its all about building and maintaining relationships.” – lets see if they can live upto it!
Cheers,
Vinay
VInay
Interesting insights!.
Brijj isn’t a startup in any sense – it’s actually a product from Info Edge, the co. behind naukri.
They will look at Brijj as an imp. offering in order to meet the customer’s needs – right from job hunting (i.e. naukri) to networking (brijj).
And I agree with you – there doesn’t seem to be anything great about the portal – and I know of few startups who are innovating in this space.
Old school ideas need not work allthe time – but only time will tell how much gap does the brijj bridge!
-Ashish
Ashish,
True.. I understand Brijj isn’t a starup, I was talking in a common way referring to other sites which capitalize on the model of other popular web appz. You got the point what I wanted to bring “there doesn’t seem to be anything great about the portal”
Brijj, can definitely implement a different strategy/approach to gain a better market in its niche! The site is looking bad in Firefox 3.0, wonder if their development team are testing on it..?
Cheer,
Vinay
P.S: Good job with Pluggd.in Ashish, I am enjoying the posts here. Cheers!
Help me understand this a bit: Why is copying a good idea, a bad thing? Why is it necessary to always do something new?
Consider techmeme for example; if that idea is “copied” for indian blogs/ political news; whats wrong with that? Localizing a good idea to a geography or focusing it on niche audience has its share of advantages.
Maybe, Bijj will understand its users better over time and evolve the product to be more relevant for its user base!!
Competition in the market is way better than encouraging Monopolies. Look what Microsoft and Google have done.
-Mahesh
Celebrating Life…
Hi,
Copying a idea is not a bad thing, but you should be able to differentiate i terms of scalability and offering. What is the special thing that you are offering than all others in the market will stand you out at a place.
If copying is a bad idea, than every business idea would have only one company. So no retail company after Walmart, no outsourcing company after Patni / Infosys, no newspaper company after BCCL.
So, thinking that you have copied a idea is bad, how you make a unique offering out of the idea is important.
-Heeren
Hi –
) OR users are not serious enough to report an issue.
I doubt about the fact that they are getting 5 K + registration per day. If that is the case, why they still carry a BUG of marking email addresses with start as number char as Invalid ,though it is perfectly valid(I am using such email address with number as a start and could not create Brijj account ex. 2mymail2@gmail.com ).
Or may be, they didn’t come across a user with such email id (after 9 months of existence with 5K registrations per day
@Ashish ..By the way. who provide these data of registrations ?. I doubt their authenticity.
Lets hope they will take action soon after my complaint reporting to their site, and I could start Brijjin
Thanks for the very useful feedback everyone.
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 users. 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.
And 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
Ashish,Vinay
This is my thoughts only, why Brizz may get good coverage in India,
1. Naukri and other sites are having establish user base, and brijj can linkup the service with existing user.
2. Proffesional network , linkedin are good, but i doubt people are aware of linkedin in India. [except who are tooo much taking participation in un-conf/conf etc] i.e. if you think how many people who are on Naukri,Monster,Timesjobs etc are having linkedin profile…you come to know truth…very less on linkedin. [I dont have statistics, but this is what i have observed...i may be wrong !!!]
shortly i mean to say, Naukri everyone is knowing in India,
Linkedin very few. and hence brijj may try to push into here.
3. Copying.
Users are smarter. Why google rocks and other can’t.
Why Gmail rocks even it is late into E-mail market.
Why Indian twitter clone failed.
Why some posts in pluggd.in get more interested feedback and some not
-Raxit
http://www.mykavita.com
Pingback: LinkedIn partners with CNBC for content sharing |Technology and Business Startups in India
Pingback: Times Group Launches Business Networking Portal, PeerPower |Technology and Business Startups in India
Pingback: Naukri to launch FirstNaukri..Why not focus on Career? |Technology and Business Startups in India
I think they are just lying. Maybe so many people would have signed up, but what is the value add. I do not think many people login to brijj to really connect with people. This is a loss project for infoedge. It would be good if they wind this up and come up with a different idea real quick.