The document describes an online education fair project organized by Greycells18 Media Pvt. Ltd. on their website www.topperlearning.com. The education fair was divided into 15 categories and allowed students to browse information about programs and participating educational institutes. Institutes could purchase participation packages that included a micro-site and qualified student leads. The goal was to provide an affordable online marketing channel for institutes and information resource for students.

1. A PROJECT REPORT
ON
ONLINE EDUCATION FAIR
A report submitted towards the partial fulfillment of the requirements of the two years
full-time Post Graduate Diploma in Management.
Submitted by
ANIRBAN SAIKIA
Post Graduate Diploma in Management
Roll No: 2K10A11
2010-2012
ASIA-PACIFIC INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT
3&4, Institutional Area, Jasola, New Delhi 110025

2. Online Education Fair
A report submitted towards the partial fulfillment of the requirements of the two years
full-time Post Graduate Diploma in Management.
Submitted by: ANIRBAN SAIKIA
Post Graduate Diploma in Management
Roll No: 2K10A11
2010-2012
ASIA-PACIFIC INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT
3&4, Institutional Area, Jasola, New Delhi 110025

3. CERTIFICATE FROM THE FACULTY GUIDE
This is to certify that the project work entitled “Online Education
Fair” is a piece of bonafied work done by Mr. Anirban Saikia, Roll
No. 2K10A11, batch 2010-2012, student of Asia Pacific Institute of
Management, New Delhi under my guidance and supervision for the
partial fulfillment of the PGDM course.
To the best of my knowledge and belief, the project embodies the
work of the candidate himself and has been duly completed.
Simultaneously, the project fulfills the requirements of the rules and
regulations related to the summer internship of the institute and I am
assured that the project is up to the standard both in respect to the
content and the language for being referred to examiner.
Dr. N H Mullick
(Faculty guide)

4. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The project was a great source of learning and the good experience
as it gave me an opportunity to correlate the theoretical knowledge
with practical experience.
Most humbly and respectfully, I would like to thank the HR team at
Greycells18 Ltd and the CCR team in Asia Pacific for giving me the
opportunity to work and learn in such a great place.
I would specially like to thank Mr. Vipul Manchanda (Vice President
Advt Sales.) and the whole team who supervised and guided me
throughout my stay which led to success of my project work.
At last and most, I express my gratitude to, Dr. N H Mullick
Asia Pacific Institute of Management, Jasola, New Delhi, who gave
me an opportunity to undertake training under their able guidance
and broaden my horizons in the field of management.
Anirban Saikia

5. DECLARATION
The final project on “Online Education Fair” under the guidance of
Mr. Vipul Manchanda, Dr. N.H Mullick is the original work done by
me. This is the property of ASIA PACIFIC INSTITUTE OF
MANAGEMENT and use of this report without prior permission of
the institute will be considered as illegal and actionable.
Anirban Saikia
ROLL NO – 2K10A11

6. INDEX
Table of contents Page No.
1. Executive Summary………………………………………………………………..1
2. Introduction………………………………………………………………………..2
3. About Greycells18 Media Pvt. Ltd………………………………………………..5
4. Detail of the Product………………………………………………………………7
5. Justification of the title……………………………………………………………15
6. Competitors with similar products………………………………………………..16
7. SWOT analysis of the Careerwise Education Fair………………………………..22
8. Literature reviews…………………………………………………………………24
9. Methodology of project…………………………………………………………...31
10. Analysis of the clients‟ feedback…………………………………………….….33
11. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….34
12. Recommendation....…………………………………………………………......35
13. References………………………………………………………………………36

7. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The project involved in organizing an Online Education fair on the
www.topperleaning.com which is a website meant for students appearing board exams.
The website is the online version of the Topper TV Channel which is available on
various DTH platforms on subscription basis. The Online education fair participant
targets were the private colleges and Universities in around the Delhi and NCR region.
The clients where provided a package of participation in the education fair and also
leads of prospective students. The student leads were generated from the registration of
the students who wanted to check out the education fair. The students did not have to
pay any charges to check out the fair. The packages were tailor made to suit the needs of
various kinds of institutes. The exhibition was designed in such a way that it answers
the queries of the students regarding the stream and courses that are available to them
and also make correct choice to reach their career goals. The students are provided
career counseling without any charges by the expert panel of the topper. The
participating institutes were also able to reap the benefit if the low cost and wider reach
of online marketing, as the comparative cost of the online marketing campaign is quite
low in comparison to the traditional marketing medium.
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8. INTRODUCTION
The project involves organizing an online education Fair on the
www.topperlearning.com website targeting the higher education institutes in Delhi and
NCR area. The main motive of the project was to encourage educational institutes to
advertise on the online medium and making them aware about the potential of the online
marketing. Since the topper channel and topperlearning.com website main business
module was of providing tuitions to the students on up to class twelve, it was obvious
for the company to target the students who have appeared the finals or have passed out
and looking forward for admission to various under graduates and post graduates
courses for expansion of business. Also the company has a huge database of the
students who have subscribed to the services of the channel or website which could be
tapped for further business purpose. Therefore to exploit this advantage of having a
history in the education sector and also having a large number of students following it
on internet and television, the company came out with the concept of an online
education fair where the students were free to visit and go through the site after
registration which was free of cost, while the educational institutes willing to participate
have to pay according to the type of package they opt for. The participating institutes
where provided a micro site inside the education fair site according to the segment they
are in. The institutes were also provided qualified leads of students who are interested in
doing courses offered by the institutes. Additional facilities such as live chat with the
students were also possible for the institutes willing to subscribe such services. The
whole campaign was designed to give additional value to the clients at a fraction of the
cost that is incurred on traditional modes of marketing such as print media, television,
radio etc. The promotion activities of the education fair was done by using Search
Engine Optimization (SEO), Google Ad-words, Banners in Face book etc.
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9. The primary objective of the project was to build a new property i.e. an annual online
education fair which caters to the needs of the students and the educational institutes. It
was designed to provide an alternative mode of marketing of the educational institutes
which mostly relies on traditional mode of advertisement such as print media,
television, radio etc. Since the property was new and the awareness of online marketing
was quite low in the educational sector, the company decided to target the private
colleges, universities in and around the Delhi and NCR area as most of the
organizational setup of the company was present in the NCR area.
The online education fair project undertaken by the company has a very huge scope of
emerging as a medium through which educational institutes can reach a huge students
based at a bare minimum cost. Also since nowadays it‟s a general trend among the
younger generation to search the internet to find out information for almost anything,
which automatically implies that there is a high chance that they will also try to search
for information related to colleges and universities which can be provided by the online
education fair. Also it is seen that most institutes struggles to convey their message
properly to the students due to availability of a proper channel to interact with the
students which acts as a major handicap for the institutes to attract quality students to
their campuses for admission. Thus to fill the vacuum of lack of a proper channel of
interaction between educational institutes and the prospective students, the company
came out with the idea of holding an online education fair which will help the institutes
to reach students and the students to interact with the various colleges and universities.
3

10. The title of the project “Online Education Fair‟‟ can be easily justified by the fact that
the whole project was based on the “Careerwise Education Fair” which was hosted on
the www.topperlearning.com website. The project was conceived to imitate a real life
education fair on an online medium. It tried to combine the benefits offered by an
education fair to the education institutes and the benefits of low cost of an online
marketing venture. It also provides a wider audience reach then a normal education fair
as, people visiting a education fair a normally comes from the locations in and around
the city where the fair is being hosted. Also the logistic cost for the education institutes
to participate is also very high because of the very fact that they have send manpower
and other resources to handle the fair. Therefore the option of a online education brings
the advantages of participation of a education fair and also provides a low cost option of
reaching maximum number of students at a very competitive cost because of the very
fact that the cost of participation in the education fair is very low in comparison to that
of the of a normal education fair. Therefore it makes sense for the educational institute
to participate in an online education fair rather than going for a normal education fair
which have a limited reach and are also very expensive to participate. Therefore there is
a very high potentiality of the online education fair to expand and increase its reach in
the marketing of the educational institutes as it provides the most cost effective mode of
marketing for the educational institutes.
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11. ABOUT GREYCELLS18 MEDIA Pvt. Ltd.
Greycells18 Media Pvt. Ltd. has been set up in association with Network18 and Educomp.
Greycells18 is a pioneer in the world of education, and has created comprehensive
interactive learning services that will help students understand subjects better, and enable
them to excel in their exams. These curriculum-based educational systems will use modern
technological innovations in the ICT space, such as Interactive TV, e-learning and mobile
learning, to create an interactive ecosystem where students can thrive. Interactive video
content of the Topper Learning System is available on Channel 570 on Tata Sky and
Channel 345 on Airtel Digital TV. Greycells18 has launched the Topper Integrated
Learning System, an interactive premium educational service which aims to supplement
the efforts of students by using modern ICT technologies. Topper deals with curriculum-
based content specifically aimed at secondary and senior school students from Classes 9 to
12. It covers Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics for Classes 11 & 12; and
Science and Mathematics for Classes 9 & 10. Interactive video content of the Topper
Learning System is exclusively distributed on addressable mediums such as DTH
Television or IPTV. It is available on Channel 570 on Tata Sky and Channel 345 on Airtel
Digital TV. Interactivity is provided through the platform‟s middleware, on pressing the
red button. The interactive elements include Daily Quiz, Topic Tips, EPG, etc. The web
portal www.topperlearning.com consists of an 'Ask- Expert' section where students can
seek answers to their queries/ doubts. The web portal also creates forums and groups where
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12. like-minded students can interact about issues relevant to their subjects. The website
supplements the content on TV in a variety of ways. After watching the episode, students
can put up their doubts/ queries on the Ask the Expert section. Replies will be provided by
our Subject Experts within 72 hours, depending on the load. The Lesson-On-Demand
facility allows students to view each episode at his convenience. Therefore, students can
watch episodes multiple times till they understand the theory. Test-Online section has an
advanced test engine that allows students to take a variety of tests online and keep track of
their scores. If desired, a detailed progress report can be sent. Students can also compare
their rankings with all those who have taken the same tests. In addition, reference study
material from various sources is provided in the Study Online section of the website to
help students with their self study.
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13. DETAILS OF THE PROJECT
The project involved hosting an Online Education Fair on the www.topperlearning.com
.The education fair went online in the month of April 2011, and it is schedule to be live till
August 2011. The Education fair was named as “Careerwise Education Fair‟‟ The
education fair was divided into 15 different categories namely, Engineering, Information
Technology, Medical, Event Management, Television Production, Business Management,
Hospitality Management, Law, Aviation, Advertising, Architecture, Bio Technology,
Fashion, Chartered Accountant, and Animation. The students visiting the fair could go
through the informative contents regarding the each segment in the website and can also go
through the colleges and educational institutes providing courses in the each segment or
category. The visit to the fair was free of cost for the students; they just need to get
registered by filling a simple online form. The educational institutes that participated in the
fair had to pay according to the package they had subscribed to. The general services
offered to the participating institutes was a combination of a micro-site inside the online
education fair according to the relevant segment for the courses offered by them. Above
that they were also given qualified leads of prospective students who are interested in
taking admission in the courses offered by them. The participation in the fair was a
constant, whereas the number of leads offered differs according to the deal signed. The
7

14. students lead was integrated with the online education fair because it was seen that that
most of the educational institutes were skeptic regarding the capabilities of the online
medium and they are not willing to invest in the online marketing concepts because of the
lack of previous track record. Since the online education fair as a concept is quite new,
most institutes are very doubtful about its performance. The general questions raised by the
institutes are the about the quality of the visitors to the website, the actual willingness of
the visitors of actually taking in the participating colleges and universities. Therefore to
remove any such skepticism of the would be clients i.e. the educational institutes, the
company had promise to deliver student leads to the participants according to the deal
signed and also guaranteed to refund money or give replacement leads if the delivered
leads were not up to the their required specification.
The Online Education Fair „Careerwise Education Fair‟ was designed in various stages,
before starting the fair a survey was conducted among the registered users of the
www.topperlearning.com to know what kind of courses the students are looking forward
after completing their 12th class exam, and after getting the feedback it was decided to
divided the online fair into 15 different segments namely, Engineering, Information
Technology, Medical, Event Management, Television Production, Business Management,
Hospitality Management, Law, Aviation, Advertising, Architecture, Bio Technology,
Fashion, Chartered Accountant, and Animation. After that details information regarding
the each segment such as eligibility, career scope, entrance test etc were provided in the
website. The online education fair was designed in such a way that the students find it
relevant to their needs and it acts as a source of information to them. The whole idea was
to make the education fair site a source of information resource for the students and also to
attract educational institutes to participate in the fair by using the strength of the fair of
8

15. being able to attract students to it. The participating institutes were provided many
additional value additions in and above the participation on the education like online
counseling and chatting facilities with students, leads of the students who are interested in
taking admission in the courses offered by the institutes. The online education fair was a
fully online marketing event where all the promotions of the education fair was done using
online mediums such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Google Ad-words, Banners in
Facebook etc. Promotion was also done on the topper channel which is part of the
Greycells18 media ltd. To minimize cost of the event no promotion was done on the
traditional platforms of advertisement. To bring the educational institutes to participate in
the fair, the company deployed its sales force which also included Interns recruited from
the management colleges. Direct sales approach was deployed to market the education fair
among the potential clients. The area that was primarily targeted by the company was the
educational institutes in and around the region of Delhi and NCR, because of the very fact
that the most of the company‟s manpower was based in the NCR. Also because of the very
fact that it was the first year of the fair and the company wanted to focus in a small area at
the beginning to be able to provide the best service to its clients and built up the fair as a
property which can be portrait as an annual event and it being able to sustain itself in the
long run, where the clients are more eager to participate in the fair. At the beginning after
short listing the potential client list the sales force visits the client‟s places which can vary
from corporate office of the institutes or visiting the institutes itself. Mostly presentation of
the proposal was made to either to the Directors or Chairman of the institutes. In most
cases deals were closed after visiting the clients many times and offering custom made
deals to them. In most cases institutes used to ask for money back guarantee for the
students leads if incase they are not up to the mark. Also most clients wanted the micro-site
of the education fair to carry a copy of their official site along with the provision of a small
9

16. video of the facilities and infrastructure of the institute. The institutes also had the facility
of accessing the data of the students who have registered on the education fair and also of
accessing the data of the students who have shown interest in their college or university in
the micro-site. The details of the students that were provided in the leads given to the
clients includes their names, telephone number, the city in which they are interested in
studying, Email Ids, the courses they are interested in taking admission, etc. The primary
source of generation of the lead was the information provided by the students while
registering to visit the fair. Thus the database of the registered users acted as a primary data
for the leads. These students were called by a dedicated call centre of the company who
verifies the details like telephone numbers, the courses they are interested in taking up, the
city were they wanted to pursue their course etc. After gathering the complete profile of the
students, the leads were filtered according to the states the student belongs, the course they
wanted to pursue their studies, the courses they are interested. In above to this additional
information like the percentage of marks they have earned in the qualification exams, the
amount of fees they are comfortable with, etc. This inputs turns out to be very helpful for
the institutes to complete their admission process. Thus the leads provided detailed
information for the counselors of the institutes, who in turn call up the students to convey
them the facilities and courses provided by them. It helped the institutes to call up a
focused grouped instead calling up a huge data base of students which in turn minimize the
admission cost of the institutes. It also helps to optimize the available manpower resource.
Also it a known fact that most educational institutes in the private sector, needs to call up
the students and send information pamphlets to them to make them aware about the
courses offered by them. As it is observed that due to the growth of the educational
institutes in a higher proportion than the number of students opting for such courses, there
is a fierce competition among the institutes to get the best students which is often difficult
10

17. due to lack of genuine data of the students. Therefore the qualified leads provided to the
institution turns out to be very valuable for the institutes in getting admission. Also it was
observed that many institutes were more interested in purchasing the leads rather than
participating in the education fair, but such clients were told that they have to participate in
the fair if they wanted to purchase the leads, as the leads were given as a additional add-
ons to make the education fair more attractive to the institutes rather than just selling the
leads. There were many institutes who liked the idea to an extent but were still skeptic
about the concept and did not wanted to come abroad the education fair, while there were
some other institutes who wanted to see the performance of the fair for a while before
committing participation in the fair. Even though it was the debut for the education fair on
the topperlearning.com site, it got a good response from the institutes and about more than
15 colleges and universities came abroad the fair. Some of the most prominent of them
were NIIT University, RIG, Guru Nanak Institute of Management, Inlead, CG Mantra,
Agol, CBS, Niam etc. It was also observed that most institutes who came abroad were
already a bit involved in the online space in the form of listing in the educational portal
like shiksha.com etc. Another fact that came out of the on field experience was that most of
the clients that came on broad were medium size institutes, the institutes that have
established in the region long ago were not interested in coming on board. Also institutes
which are very low key also did not come on broad. Also stand along colleges were more
eager to participate in the fair rather than those institutes which operate under a group of
institutions. Those institutes those who are controlled by a central body and part of a bigger
group found itself unable to take decision to participate because the centre head was not
authorize to make marketing decisions and most of their marketing plans were made by the
central body.
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18. The education fair was well taken in the market, even though there was a lot
apprehension among the clients about its relevance and the benefits they will derive
from it, and above all as the fair was a newly conceived one, their apprehension was
added up. To minimize this fact the sales team had to make a very clear cut presentation
of the product and also take every step to clarify any doubts that may be present in their
mind. The end result of the whole sales operation was very good and the online fair was
able to gather more than 15 clients on board who came from various categories. It was
observed that most management colleges were the top participant in the fair. Even
institutes providing specialized course like animation also came aboard the fair. The
project could have been more successful if the sales operation was started a bit earlier
than the mid of April start, as many institution who wanted to come abroad was unable
to do so because they have to get their marketing budget approved from their central
committee, and most these budgeting are over by the end of January of each year.
Therefore the late launch of the fair did have an impact on the number of participants.
But the clients who came in were largely satisfied with the fair because steps was taken
by the company to ensure that there would be only 5 to 8 colleges or institutes
participating in each segment of the fair. This was done to ensure that there is no clutter
of institutes, and the students visiting the fair do not get distracted by the presence of a
large number of colleges. It also meant that the institutes participating get exclusivity of
participation and also the leads that they were provided also become more relevant to
them, as if the same sets of students are called upon by all the institutes, it is highly
possible that the students will not give positive response to the institutes. The clients
also took the fair in a positive way as the cost of the fair was very competitive and the
package were very flexible and were tailored to suit the needs of individual clients.
Even though gerycells18 is new to the market of online fair and leads selling it was able
12

19. to generate a good response from the market. Many clients were very skeptic about the
capability of the company to generate interest for the education fair and able to gather a
sizeable number of visitors to the website, but after the launch of the fair, they were
quite happy with the kind of response the site was generating. Though few problems did
arise about the quality of the leads provided to the institutes like wrong phone numbers,
or false name, or the student is not interested in taking etc, which lead to some
disharmony among the clients. But these issues were promptly addressed by providing
replacement leads or if the client insists, refund of the fees for the leads. But refunds
were very few as most institutes were satisfied with the quality of the leads and happy to
take replacement leads in exchange of the bad leads. One factor which acted as a
challenge for the company was the very fact that many other firms had came out with
ventures selling leads of students to the institutes and the general experience of the
institutes dealing with them was not very good. Many firms had sold fake leads to the
institutes in the past which had lowered the general trust level in the market. The clients
who had past bad experience were very skeptic. In many cases they have asked for
demo leads the first stage before signing the deal. Only when they were satisfied with
the results that, they went decided to participate in the campaign. In overall it can be
said that the online education fair which is branded as “Careerwise Education Fair” was
able to garner quite a sizeable business even though it was a new venture of the
Greycells18 under the banner of the Toppers. The history of toppers was quite helpful
for the event and if the fair did not had the backing of the Greycells18 and its promoters
in the form of Network 18 and Educomp. If the same event would had been organize by
some smaller brand the results would had been quite different because it was observed
that most of the clients entertained the concept only because it had the backing of one of
the biggest media group in the country in the form of Network18 and also being
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20. associated with Educomp which is a big name in the field of interactive learning. Also it
was seen that the most education institute were comfortable with in dealing with bigger
companies as they automatically implies better reliability as no company with good
business sense would damage their name in the market by coming up with dubious
ventures.
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21. JUSTIFICATION OF THE TITLE “ONLINE EDUCATION FAIR”
The title of the project can be justified from the fact that it is based on the experience
gained while trying to sell the “Careerwise Education Fair” which is a online education fair
being organized by Greycells18 Media Ltd, on its website. The project tries to explore a
new segment of advertising through a online medium. It tries to embed the features of a
normal education fair with the features of a online marketing campaign. The main target of
the project was to popularize the mode of online advertising among the educational
institutes. It also tries to introduce the concept of online education fair among the
educational institutes and also show them the benefits of online advertising versus the
traditional modes such as print media or electronic media such as television, radio etc.
Other aspect of the online fair which was highlighted was that it is very interactive mode of
advertisement and a highly customizable.
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22. COMPETITORS WITH SIMILAR PRODUCTS
Even though the concept of online education fair was quite new in the country, there are
numerous companies who are dealing in the business of selling students leads to the
educational institutes. Many of these firms also provide online listing of the institutes in
their website with a easy to use search engine. Some of the companies which are very
active in this domain are namely, shiksha.com, Htcampus.com, sulekha.com,
justdial.com, etc.
Shiksha.com is one of the foremost companies in the field of listing of educational
institutes and providing leads of students to the institutes. Shiksha.com is part of the
naukri.com group. Other portals owned by the parent company Info Edge are
99acres.com, JeevanSathi.com, Brijj.com and AskNaukri.com. Shiksha.com was setup
as a mode to connect education seeker with the education provider.
It is one of the most aggressive player in the market and while interacting with the
clients it was observed by the sales team of greycells18 that shiksha.com was one of the
most trusted player in the market in the field of leads, the general perception of the
clients was that the leads provided by shiksha.com was authentic and reliable to a great
extent. Also the traffic of shiksha.com was also very good, the students were aware of
the services provided by shiksha.com and to a extend it can be said that shiksha.com is
one of the most potent competitor of greycells18 as they have been in this business for
quite a long time and thus they have the advantage of being the early movers.
16

23. HTCampus.com is an education portal from the house of Firefly eVentures, the internet
subsidiary of HT Media Ltd. The site is aimed at students passing out from school and
college to help them take the right decision about their higher education.
HTCampus.com provides the students with comprehensive, updated and reliable
information on over 30000 colleges across various courses and streams. The site also
has certain value added tools for students like the Future Salary Calculator, which helps
the student map out his earnings after pursuing a particular course, a unique compare
colleges feature and access to expert counseling.
Htcampus has also tied up with various colleges which enables it to bring in a system
through which students can also apply to more than 200 colleges across categories of
MBA, Engineering, BBA and Hotel Management through the HTCampus Common
Application form. This facility minimizes the cost of applying to colleges for the
students and the colleges have the advantage of getting exposure among the students
looking for admission.
While interaction with the client it was also found that Htcampus.com was providing a
very competitive package to the institutes wherein they provide them a free listing on
the Htcampus.com site if they advertise on the Hindustan Times newspaper. Thus
Htcampus.com was trying to exploit the advantage of being part of a newspaper printing
house and clubbing the services with the newspaper advertisements to maximize sales
of both the ventures. Htcampus.com also have the advantage of being able to advertise
its services across the wide spectrum of newspapers that its group owned and thus it was
17

24. possible for them to spread the news of any new service or features of their site without
having to spend any money for promotion. The awareness of Htcampus.com was also
very high among the students due to the large number of events organize by
Htcampus.com in school and colleges. Thus Htcampus.com can be said to be a very
worthy competitor for the Greycells18 and its online education fair project.
Sulekha.com is a global, interactive, mobile and internet platform for connecting
Indians worldwide and serves them through a portfolio of industry-leading services
including Classifieds, Yellow Pages Business Search, Events and Social Media reviews
and participation. Today, Sulekha serves an exponentially growing online and mobile
member base of 6.2 million in over 50 cities in India, US and elsewhere as one of the
most popular online/mobile provider of YP business search results to users and business
leads to small to medium business advertisers and merchants, online/mobile provider of
classifieds in the broadest range of categories, social media site offering largest
events/opinions/reviews in targeted domains. Some of the services of sulekha.com
include one of the largest listing of general Classifieds, comprehensive and accurate
Yellow Pages business listings in India, the largest number of Small to Medium
Business advertisers in the online/mobile space, the largest base of member-generated
content amongst Indian sites that spurs local commerce, a sophisticated and scalable
mobile/online platform that serves millions of users on a daily basis, Sulekha derives its
revenues in India through a „performance guaranteed‟ response model through which
we have served a customer base of nearly 20,000 SMB customers and hundreds of
18

25. major brands. Sulekha has married world class technology with effective business and
monetization processes to achieve accelerating growth of both revenue and usage.
Sulekha.com continues to rapidly expand its user and customer base both through its
own sales force and through a growing network of prominent alliances with major
mobile and online partners such as Reliance, Vodafone, Airtel, Spice, Sify and
others….making the use of Classifieds and Local Search easy and ubiquitous.
While interaction with clients it was found that the view of the clients about the quality
of leads and indexing of sulekha.com is not very good. The general mood among the
clients about sulekha can be said that they have lost trust in its services due to lacking of
reliable leads and most of their leads are turning up to be useless.
JustDial is one of the most favorite local search destinations in the country. The
company caters to over 57 million unique users. This one of a kind local search service
is accessible from across 2000 towns and cities in India on Phone (08888888888 /
69999999), Web (justdial.com), WAP (m.justdial.com) and SMS (08888888888).
JustDial in India employs 4000 strong work force and has more than 135,000 paid
advertisers. The company bridges the gap between buyers and sellers by helping buyers
find the right providers of products and services while helping sellers improve the
efficiency of their marketing channels.
19

26. While interacting with the clients it was observed that justdial has also emerge as a
leading player in the business of leads selling. Since the user bases of justdial is huge
and it has a huge database, it is exploiting it to gain a share of the education pie. Justdial
offers its advertisers leads as an add-on to increase its sales. Justdial can posses as a
major challenge for the Greycells18 in the field of leads selling due to its fast growth
and its large registered user data base.
Other forms of competition for the online education are the traditional education fairs
which are organized by many big and small companies. Most institutes are accustomed
with the working of the traditional format of education fair, feels that real life
interaction with the students in a normal educational fair with their counselors are more
fruitful and delivers more goods than a online solution, it is perceived that the online
fairs are not serious in nature and most students do not give too much of importance to
these online events. But it is also a given fact that the traditional real life educational
fair are very costly in nature because the organizers have bear a lot of logistics cost.
Therefore the charges are on a higher side. Above that the participants have to send
counselors to these events which results in high operation cost. Also since education fair
are hosted in different cities throughout the country, the travelling and lodging expenses
of the man force also have to be incurred by the institutes. Even then it is seen that the
institutes are ready to bear the high cost of the education fair, because of the fact that
they don‟t have many other option of reaching the students for admission. The online
education fair concept thus, if properly organized and its publicity is properly done, it
can turn out to be a worthy competitor to the real life education fair. Also efforts have to
be taken to educate the clients the benefits of online education fair to that of the real life
fair, so that the several inhibitions of the clients can be removed. Also effort should be
20

27. taken to verify the traffic data generated in the site by some third party because it is seen
that many clients have doubts on the numbers claimed by the organizers of online
events. The clients have this notion that most of the figures are bloated to attract more
clients and thus to increase its trustworthiness, some corrective steps are required to be
taken up.
Thus the competition for Greycells18 in the field of online education fair and sales of
leads is quite a sizeable. The company would definitely need to bring in constant
upgrade in its services to be a step ahead of its competition. The company has to exploit
its popularity among the students and its large fans following in the online social
mediums such as facebook.com to popularize its services. The company has to also
improve upon the quality of the leads, as it is observed that most institutes have come
abroad the education fair to get leads.
21

28. SWOT ANALYSIS OF THE CAREERWISE EDUCATION FAIR
On the basis of the attributes of the Greycells18, the organizers of the careerwise education
fair and it‟s other competitors with a similar kind of product line, the product does faces
challenges and also have many strong points to succeed.
One of the key strength of Greycells18 is that it is a company which was founded with the
vision of looking into the education domain, it is operating a interactive educational
television channel form a long time and it has a very large viewership via the mode of
DTH platform. It is a premium channel and the subscriber have to pay to view the channel,
above that it has a registered user‟s base of around four lakhs students on its website, i.e.
www.topperlearning.com , which is the site where the online education is being hosted.
This is what most of the other competitors lack.
One of the key weaknesses of the Greycell18 that hampers the education fair is the fact that
most of the clients are not aware of the topper brand and thus they refuse to come abroad
the online fair, whereas other competitors like www.shiksha.com are very well known in
the market and is a recognized brand in the field of education. Also the visibility of
shiksha.com in the market is high, and with the students and the institutes are regular users
of the services of the shiksha.com.
The key opportunity that the online education fair provides for the company is that it will
help it to remain connected with its students who are passing out of the class 12. As the
companies target group is the students of class 9 till class 12, most students stop coming to
the website after passing out. The online fair will provide a opportunity for the passed out
students to visit the site regularly and thus the company will not lose out on its old users.
22

29. The key threat for the education fair are the inability to provide the desired leads to the
institutes which results in the institutes opting out of the fair. It also results in the monetary
loses and losing a potential client for future events also. Since the company‟s core business
is the education domain, it will suffer a serious loss of market reputation if it is not able to
fulfill the client‟s expectation and also might result in losing out of future business also.
23

30. LITERATURE REVIEWS
Article 1
Name of the article: The Internet as a medium for marketing communication
Authors: Author: Feng Yan; Li Po
Publisher: University essay from Luleå / Business Administration and Social Sciences
Publication: 2006
Abstract: The advent of the Internet has added various new dimensions to the marketing
communication efforts of organizations today. The purpose of this thesis is to provide a
deeper understanding of how the Internet is used as a medium for marketing
communication. In order to reach this purpose, research questions on the mix of online
promotional tools as well as the stakeholders targeted were stated. A literature review was
conducted based on these research questions, resulting in a conceptual framework used in
obtaining empirical evidence. A qualitative, case study mythology was used, relying
primarily on interviews to collect data. The findings showed that the online communication
tools such as online advertising and public relations are the most important tools within the
online toolbox. Furthermore, the way to communicate with stakeholders on the Internet is
through intranets, extranets, Websites, E-mail and Chat functions. The main functions of
websites are to provide general information, provide customer service and support, as well
as improve communication with stakeholders.
Article 2
Name of the article: Online Advertising: Hit Rates for Jumps from Banner Ads
24

31. Authors: Author: David R. Thompson and Birgit Wassmuth
Publisher: The Web Journal of Mass Communication Research
Publication: March 2001
Abstract: This article reports a content analysis of newspaper practice regarding targeting
jump links to banner ads. By "targeting," the authors refer to the practice of matching the
content of the banner ad to the content on the page to which the banner is linked. Perhaps
because of click-through measurement techniques, previous research conveys an
assumption that a banner must always jump to the advertiser's home page. This study
extends prior research to examine the "hit" rate for jumps from banners to relevant content.
Also, this is one of the first studies to record banners with no jump links and failures to
connect to a jump page. Banner ads were coded for targeting banner ads to their jump links
(hit; near miss; miss; no jump link; failed to connect). A strong majority (88.6 percent) of
all jumps from the banner ads coded were hits. In most cases, clicking on a banner ad
resulted in landing on a new file, the jump page, with content related to the banner ad.
However, the researchers believe modifications to online advertising strategies are needed
to improve the "information" connection between banner ad and jump page. And the
researchers believe that the findings presented here may be applied to other studies of Web
site content and design, navigability, and interactivity. By investigating online newspapers,
this pilot study breaks the short tradition of previous research that examines "Top 50" sites.
The research reported here is one of the first studies of online newspaper advertising based
on a systematic sample. And it is one of the first studies of online newspaper advertising
that looks beyond the home page to examine all levels of the site.
25

32. Article 3
Name of the article: The I Online - Identity Conceptualization in Social Media and the
Implications for Online Marketing Communications
Authors: Charlotte Diaz De La Vega; Madelein Fagerlind
Publisher: University essay from IT-universitetet i Göteborg/Tillämpad information
steknologi
Publication: Feb 2011
Abstract: Purpose: To determine which, why and how social media tools are used by
young adults to conceptualize identity/identities online, the extent of such activity and the
implications for online marketing communications. Literature review: New internet
technologies have altered the way brands and consumers interact with power shifting from
organizations to consumers‟. Social media allows users the possibility of creating and
maintaining multiple identities making the task of locating them increasingly difficult for
marketers. In reality we adopt several aspects of self but the extent of this behavior online
is little researched. For marketers to understand and successfully target their audience it is
necessary to also understand individual uses and gratifications of online interaction.
Methodology: The research undertakes a qualitative data collection. Primarily a pilot study
was undertaken. Thereafter primary data for the main study was collected through in-depth
interviews and secondary data was collected from academic literature and reports.
Findings: The social media tools adopted are motivated by respondents private and career
interests. Self representation is apparent and differs between sites regarding what part of
their identity to disclose and conceal. Status, empowerment and reputation are important
motivators for the respondents‟ social media interaction, through which we also discover
26

33. their central uses and gratifications of social media. In terms of brand interaction we
discover various ways in which two ways online communication between both users and
brands is greatly appreciated. Conclusion: Through social media tools, young adults
choose to disclose different parts of their self depending on the uses and gratifications of
the site. Both communication among peers and direct brand communication are important
when adopting brands. Although they are individualistic, peer group support does play a
role in their online interactions. Motivations for young adults online are immediacy,
empowerment and the creation and management of identity. For marketers the challenge
lies in regaining partial control by motivating consumer interaction
Article 4
Name of the article: Customer perceived E-service quality in online shopping
Authors: Xi Zhang; Yu Tang
Publisher: University essay from Luleå /Business Administration and Social Sciences
Publication: 2006
Abstract: The advent of the Internet and e-commerce has brought a new way of marketing
and selling many products. There are evidences indicating that the e-service quality is an
essential strategy to a success, probably more important than a low price and a good web
presence. The purpose of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of the e-service
quality dimensions that affect the customer perceived e-service quality in online shopping.
On the basis of a detailed literature review, a frame of reference was firstly developed.
Then, five most important dimensions of the e-service quality, i.e. the website design,
reliability, responsiveness, trust and personalization were selected out for exploring how
27

34. these dimensions affect the customer perceived e-service quality in online shopping, which
constitute the research questions of this thesis. After that, a qualitative research approach
was used and the empirical data were gathered through open-end and focused interviews
with four different kinds of customers to investigate the research questions. Moreover, data
presentation and data analysis were conducted in accordance with the research questions
and the frame of reference. Finally, the findings and conclusions were presented by
answering the research questions, i.e. to describe how the website design, reliability,
responsiveness, trust and personalization affect the customer perceived e-service quality
and the implications for managements, theories and future researches are addressed.
Throughout this study, some new factors of the dimensions and some new dimensions of
the e-service quality are discovered.
Article 5
Name of the article: Conversion Rate Problem of SMEs in Internet Marketing - a
Developing Country Perspective
Authors: Mohammad Sheikh
Publisher: University essay from Blekinge Tekniska Högskola / Sektionen för
Management (MAM)
Publication: 2009
Abstract: In the recent years, electronic commerce has become an important alternative or
additional sales and marketing channel. Many companies are only selling through this
channel while many others are using it as an additional channel for boosting their sales.
Business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce represents an important research area because
28

35. retail consumer expectations, attitudes, and behavior are studied. Companies can design
their marketing models around desires and preferences of the customers. Because of
inherent nature of e-commerce retail websites, customers can log on to the sites, perform
research and product / price comparisons, fill in their shopping carts, and may log off
without making any purchases. Main reasons on the part of website visitors for not
converting into paying customers are low level of trust on this medium of purchases
because customers are required to give out financial and personal data, customers can do
comparison shopping or window shopping, high shipping costs, unclear pricing and return,
and refund policies of the websites, etc. From the point of view of sellers, abandoned
shopping carts represent potential sales that could not be realized. Companies are, for
obvious reasons, interested in converting these lost customers into sales. Retail websites, of
large as well as small-to-medium sized (SME) categories, experience this low conversion
rate problem for customers including those from developing countries. Specifically,
purpose of this research was formulated as four research questions: 1. Categories of
products and services e-commerce consumers from Pakistan prefer to buy from internet. 2.
Reasons for low conversion rates. 3. Extent to which Pakistani online customers are price-
sensitive. 4. Choice between product / service differentiation and low price Pakistani
customers would make. This thesis aimed to look at what goes on in the minds of
customers from developing countries when they do not make purchases at retail e-
commerce websites. A questionnaire asking customers from Pakistan as to what are their
preferences about e-sellers and their main turn-offs at vendor websites was developed and
circulated among the sample population. Analysis of data collected via the survey indicates
the following with respect to the research questions: 1. In terms of preferences and features
concerning products purchased over internet, Pakistani consumers are not basically
different from their international counterparts as Pakistani consumers generally purchase
29

36. the same kind of products and services as international consumers do according to what is
reported in the relevant literature. However, some concerns revealed by subjects of the
survey were related to reluctance of merchants to ship to Pakistani destinations, potential
credit card problems, unavailability of services like Pay Pal in Pakistan, etc. 2. Main
reasons for low conversion rates for Pakistani consumers are also similar to those reported
for international consumers from a number of countries. Major reason of low conversion
rates is low trust in websites because of concerns related to sharing personal and financial
information on the internet. 3. Pakistani consumers are found to be relatively low users of
e-shopping and strongly price sensitive. 4. Pakistani consumers are also found to not very
much interest in availing differentiated products/services over the internet. This thesis also
presents a review of relevant literature and offers some recommendations for future
research into the relevant area.
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37. METHODOLOGY OF PROJECT
The project was made of the basis of the information collected while going on sales call to
potential clients and on the basis of the inputs received from the team members. The sales
operation was carried out by doing both cold calls and by visiting clients whose leads have
been provided by the company. In both the cases the sales operation was carried out by the
help of presenting the proposal to the clients as the product is a online education fair and
only way to make sales pitch for that product was through a proper presentation which tries
to explain all the features of the product. As it was decided to focus in the Delhi and NCR
area to sell the product, a list was made of the potential colleges and institutes in the area.
Only private institutes were targeted as government institutes do not advertise to get
admission. Also it was mostly large or medium size institutes were targeted as most small
institutes are not very active in the online medium. Also institutes which have; listed
themselves on the sites like www.shiksha.com etc were targeted as they are likely to
advertise on other online mediums also. Also since most institutes are skeptic about the
online mode and are more comfortable going for the traditional modes of advertisements,
the entry cost was kept low and they were shown the benefits of low cost and higher reach
of the online medium. Day to day records kept doing the period of sales done was used to
compile the project. Also information gathered from the websites of the competitors was
also used to compile the information of the activities of the competitors. Feedbacks of the
clients were also used to compile the report, the client feedback was considered as a
primary source of data regarding the experience and trust on the online medium of
advertisement of the educational institutes. Feedbacks received from the colleagues at
Greycells18 were also used to compile the report.
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38. The period of study of the report was during my summer internship period ranging from
18th April 2011 till 3rd of June 2011. The projects related information was collect during
the interaction with the clients. A constant day to day feedbacks received from the clients
during the meetings were kept in record which was ultimately used to derive a outcome of
the whole project. No questionnaire was put forward to clients because it was a sales call
and the primary objective at that point was to make the deal and thus it was not possible to
ask the clients to fill up any questionnaires, but the inputs received from the clients were
kept in record to come to a conclusion of the kind of response the clients were having
about the project, i.e. the online education fair. No previous reports could be used as a
reference to make the report because of the very fact that it was the first time that the
company has come up with the concept of coming up with a online education fair.
Therefore very few matters were available with the company to refer to. The project could
not be compared with any other project, because the online education fair concept is still in
its infancy stage and a very few record are available to compare it with and thus it cannot
be referred as success or failure. The sole purpose of the company was to build up a new
property for future years and thus the online fair can be termed as a success as it was able
to bring awareness about the online fair as a concept and also a good number of institutes
came on broad the education fair.
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39. ANALYSIS OF THE CLIENTS FEEDBACK
On the basis of the feedbacks received from the clients during the course of the meeting,
the online education fair can be analysis. Some of the observations made on the basis of
the feedbacks are, around 75% of the clients are highly skeptic about participating in an
online education fair as they have doubts about the actual number of visitors to the site
during the fair period. Around 80% of the clients who participated in the fair did so only to
get access to the leads of students. Around 50% of the clients have used online medium to
promote their institutes before they being approach by Greycells18. Almost all the clients
have a fair idea of the business of selling of leads. Almost 90% of the institutes have
purchased students leads at some point of time. Most of the institutes who have purchased
leads are not satisfied with the quality of the lead they have purchased. The competitor
who has the best satisfaction level is shiska.com whose quality of leads is considered to be
the best till date. Around 30% of the clients were totally not interested in the concept and
though that it is not going to be useful to them. Almost all the clients mainly depend on the
print media to advertise their institutes, the general perception among the institutes is that
print media is the most trusted mode of advertisement and they feel that it has the
maximum reach among the targeted audience. Around 40% of the clients were open to
experiment with the online education fair, because they found out that the cost of
participation in the online fair is very low in comparison to the traditional mode of
advertisement. Around 75% of the clients had no problems regarding the funds or paucity
of budget, but still did not came abroad the education fair because they did not had faith in
the online medium as they though it lack transparency, as they thought that it is not
possible for them to keep a tab of the actual number of people visiting the site and the
authenticity of the data provided by the people who registers themselves on the sites.
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40. CONCLUSION
The online education fair “Careerwise education fair” was fairly successful. The response
the online fair got from the clients was quite good, even though it was a debut product
from the Greycells18. The concept of mixing participation on the online fair and bundling
leads of students with was quite a hit with the clients. The clients were happy with the
feature of the qualified leads wherein a dedicated call centre of the company filters the
leads by personally calling them up and thus filtering out junk leads. It was observed that
most clients were more interested in getting access to leads rather than the participation in
the fair. The online education fair was able to combine the features of a normal education
fair and the features of online marketing. The online education fair was also able to attract
clients to it by the very virtue of being a low cost medium with a wider reach than the
normal education fair. It was also observed that many of the clients were first time
advertiser on the online medium. The response of the students was quite up to expectation
and the number of students visiting the online fair was quite good. The promotion of the
online fair was quite successful in attracting traffic to the education fair site. There is a
huge potential for the growth of the concept of online education fair as it provides a lot of
additional advantage over a normal fair and thus over the years it can grow as a major
property for the company if proper focus is given to the collection better leads and
increasing the client profile. At the end it can be concluded that the “Career wise education
fair” was a success and have achieved most of the goals and it was a good opening year for
the fair. The fair has all the features which if properly taped can make it as one of the most
sought after online fair in the years to come.
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41. RECOMMENDATION
Some of the few improvements that are required to make the online fair even better
performer in the next year are as follows, at first the timing of the fair should be corrected
a bit, this year the fair went online at the start of May and is schedule to be live till August
depending upon the clients response. Most clients felt that fair should have started
somewhere in the month of January or February when most the entrance test such CAT etc
starts. Another aspect that needs to be kept in mind is that the company should ensure that
colleges with dubious reputation should not be allowed to take part as if substandard
institutes are part of the fair the students‟ trust in the fair will go down. The ultimate goal
should be to build up the “Careerwise Education Fair” brand. Steps should be taken to
improve the quality of the leads by proper verification of the leads and the call centre
executives should try to gather the maximum information about the priorities of the
students. Facility of online chat of the institutes counselors and visiting students should be
added. Institutes outside the Delhi NCR region should also be targeted to make the fair a
national event rather than restricting it to the specific area, which will help to bring in more
clients and also give students more options.
35

42. REFERENCES
Websites Referred
1. www.topperlearning.com
2. www.htcampus.com
3. www.shiksha.com
4. www.justdial.com
5. www.sulekha.com
Other Sources
1. Inputs received from the team members
2. Inputs received from the clients during interaction.
36