Breathing Down the Neck of JustDial? Startup Zatse to Ramp up Operations

Monday November 19, 2012 , 5 min Read

This year in the month of October, the government expanded the ambit of Competition Commission of India (CCI), with an amendment to the Competition Act. The amendment enables the CCI to take under its purview all sectors of the Indian industries. Talking about healthy competition, we now have a startup ZatSe that claims of very encouraging traction and might prove to be a fight for JustDial in the future. What is ZatSe? "A place where you can get any of your questions answered."

Ashima Munjal, the brain behind ZatSe, says, “We are building a whole CRM to map and understand our callers and align to individual needs. One shoe fits all – is not what the consumer of today is looking for. Also, we differ in terms of services being offered: movies, cricket, mobile recharge and live flight arrival-departure information being shared on the phone is our USP; no other competitor has ventured into this space.”

“In 2006, when I came back to India from the States, I saw a lot of development happening. The airport, metro etc were being built and there was utter chaos. For anyone to find a simple solution, service or product, at that moment, was a mammoth task. It was then the idea stuck me to consolidate all information under one roof. As for being an entrepreneur, I belong to the family which has always been dynamic in the business front and gave India wheels in the literal sense of it. Entrepreneurship was for me a natural progression,” says Ashima, sharing with us her entrepreneurial journey. ZatSe is the flagship brand of Majestic IT Services Limited, a local information & solutions centre, working towards ‘making people’s lives convenient on the fly’.

The team backing Ashima is a dedicated and passionate bunch. “We wear the brand on our sleeve, love to use the service at every opportunity we get, and are always working on ways to enhance our product and user experience. Whenever anyone in the core group wants anything that one can fathom, the next question we ask is can ZatSe do this e.g. last year one of my colleagues wanted to know the cricket score, and called a few friends. Next day, he was figuring out where we can get the data feed and what all needs to be done for us to share scores with our user base. Today, anyone who wants the latest score update can call 011-6800-6800 can get it ZatSe,” adds a proud Ashima.

ZatSe finds JustDial to be the most prominent competitor, and hence they want to point out a major difference. Although, the basic model of information sharing is the same, the two players differ in the terms of the way information is shared. “We do not spam callers with multiple numbers and calls being received; neither do we impinge their privacy by sharing their number with multiple service providers. We share the number of service providers closest to the caller’s area of requirement,” says Ashima.

ZatSe is taking smaller steps and progressing. They launched our services in Delhi-NCR and are now expanding geographically and increasing their offerings. With Delhi-NCR done, a dotted map defining their pan India expansion is on the table. Ashima goes on to say, “Staying aligned with our vision to become a single window solution for all allied areas of business promotion, there are also unique offerings in the pipeline. The focus is on fulfilling consumer’s latent needs & desires thus creating an ever increasing loyal consumer base for ZatSe.”

There are some inherent challenges that the industry is currently facing. A very high percentage of service providers in SMBs change their numbers very frequently, and this which makes it extremely difficult and costly to keep live and updated. The industry itself is in its infancy, so a clear defined industry is still to be labeled to be understood by people. Ashima draws parallels between the call centre business saying that, “It’s taken nearly a decade for the call-centre business to be understood as BPO by all and sundry. This leads to a lot of aware non-users segment of these services because they do not know what is this all about.”

Also, the unsolicited SMSes from the organized sectors and industries are impacting the cost head for this industry as our SMSes are transactional and need based. The unsolicited bombardment of SMSes by various sectors has affected the cost of the SMS by probably 3-4 folds in the last 12-15 months. “A lot of our queries are linked to emergency needs by people; ex. ambulance, blood bank, women helpline etc., and we give this service free to the callers, whereas we end up paying astronomical charge which is what it has become for all these SMSes. TRAI has been supportive of this industry and its time again that TRAI needs to isolate this industry and provide it a special status for the services it renders,” adds Ashima.

ZatSe aspires to be the best in class information & solutions services’ company on voice & web. It is planning to enter into new geographies soon, and is also planning a beta test in Mumbai. Also, ZatSe will be seen in the metros very shortly.

Check out ZatSe quickly! Call 6800-6800; alternatively you can also check out their Page on YourStory Pages!

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