99acres.com Sees Big Traffic Drop Before Rebounding Towards End of June

Indian portal giant 99acres.com saw traffic drop by around 80% in April at the height of the COVID-crisis before rebounding to around -15% of normal levels for the time of year towards the end of June. The news came in parent company Info Edge’s earnings call held towards the end of June and was delivered by CEO Hitesh Oberoi who also said that traffic for the company’s market-leading jobs portal Naukri had behaved similarly over the same period.

The company, which also has interests in the edu-tech space in the form of shiksha.com, recorded an 8% loss in terms of billing but an increase in revenue of 10.3% for Q4 of the financial year 19-20 (which in India runs from April to March).

As for 99acres itself, the portal reported billing figures for Q4 down by 24% but over the whole financial year, the portal saw billing grow 3.5% with the number of paying agent customers growing 15%.

99acres has been pretty much neck and neck with eternal rival Magicbricks in terms of traffic recorded over the last few months. Both have huge financial backers (Magicbricks is owned by India’s largest media conglomerate, The Times Group) and should be able to absorb any temporary losses in revenue for the foreseeable future.