AJIT BALAKRISHNAN

Founder and Chairman of Rediff.com

By
Team 8
Ajith Balakrishnan’s Background

Education Qualification : Bachelors degree in Physics

from Kerala University .
Post Graduate Diploma in Management ,
Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata

Organization : Rediff.com (NASDAQ: REDF) is one of the premier

worldwide online providers of news, information, communication,
entertainment and shopping services.

Designation : Founder and Chairman of

Rediff.com
Positions held
 Chairman and Managing Director of the Company.
 Director of Rediffusion Dentsu Young & Rubicam Private
Limited,
 India Abroad Publications, Inc.,
 India In New York, Inc.,
 India Abroad Publications (Canada) Inc.,
 Value Communications Corporation
 VuBites India Private Limited.
 Mr. Balakrishnan is also Chairman of the Board of Governors of
The Indian Institute of Management Calcutta
 Chairman of the Working Group of Internet Governance set up
by the Government of India
His Interests :
Interested in impact of technology on society
( and vice versa); multicultural examples and
cases particularly from Latin America, China
and other non-Western cultures ( only because
the Western cases are relatively well
documented)
Favorite books:
100 years of solitude...
Thirst to know about
Rediff.com.
 What was your family background
like? Was it entrepreneurial?
 What prompted you to leave your first
job after just ten months and start on
your own
 How much did you invest in
Rediff.com?
 What do you think is the role of a professional
investor (VC or angel) in a startup? When should an
entrepreneur look for funding?
 Do you interact a lot with young wannabe or actual
entrepreneurs these days? If yes, are they very
different from their compatriots one or two decades
ago?
 Does a formal education, especially business
degrees such as MBA determine one’s success
as an entrepreneur? Did your MBA from IIM Calcutta
help?
Rediff.com (Nasdaq: REDF)
 Mission In The Internet Space
To provide world-class online consumer service
offerings to Indians worldwide.

 Rediff.com provides a platform for Indians worldwide to

connect with one another online. Rediff.com is committed
to offering a personalized and a secure surfing and
shopping environment.

 Rediff.com additionally offers the Indian American

community one of the oldest and largest Indian weekly
newspapers, India Abroad
Annual Report
 Rediff.com has reported a net loss of $2.61
million for the second quarter ended
September 2009, as compared to a net loss of
$0.42 million posted for the corresponding
quarter of the previous fiscal year.
 Total revenues declined by 43 per cent to
$4.19 million during September 2009 ended
quarter from $7.32 million posted for the
second quarter of the previous fiscal year.
Steps to overcome
 Ajit Balakrishnan, chairman and CEO, Rediff.com, has
said, “As we had said in our last earnings call, we have
taken a number of steps to improve the customer
experience on our site, including the removal of ads from
our home page, reduction of intrusive and non-contextual
ads on other pages, as a result of which we expected a
reduction in our revenue in the upcoming quarters.
Accordingly, we saw a decline in revenues for the quarter
ended September 30, 2009 by 16 per cent over the
previous quarter and by 43 per cent over the
corresponding quarter in the previous year in US Dollar
terms.”
Thank You