Justdial

Justdial (sometimes stylised as JustDial or JD) is a company that provides local search for different services in India over the phone and online. Founded in 1996 by VSS Mani,[1][6][7] the company is headquartered in Mumbai, India.[6] In addition to its headquarters, Justdial has offices in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, New Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, and Pune.[8] In 2019 Justdial had 12,691 employees and a database of approximately 25.7 million listings and 500,838 active paid campaigns.[9]

Justdial
Type of businessPublic
Traded asNSE: JUSTDIAL
Founded1996 (1996)
HeadquartersMumbai, Maharashtra, India
Area servedIndia
Founder(s)VSS Mani
Key people
  • VSS Mani (MD)(CEO)[1]
  • Abhishek Bansal (CFO)[2]
  • Ramani Iyer (Director)[3]
IndustryConsumer Services
ServicesLocal search (Internet)
Revenue₹984.46 crore (US$140 million) (March 2019)[4]
Employees10,984 (June 2020)[5]
URLJustDial.com
Current statusOnline

History

In 1987, while working for a yellow pages company,[6] VSS Mani thought of replacing yellow pages with a database of information that users could call to receive current information about local business listings.[10] To launch his venture, Mani acquired the Mumbai landline phone number 2888-8888. After several years of seeking financial backing for his idea, Mani launched Justdial in 1996 with a seed capital of Rs. 50,000, five employees, a few rented computers, and borrowed furniture.[6][10][11][12]

In 2007 an Internet and mobile app version of the database called Justdial.com was launched.[13]

On 20 May 2013 Justdial went public at a price between INR 897 and 898.[14] Of the total 17.5 million shares, 13.5 million of them were offered to the public, while the rest were given to fifteen previous investors at INR 530 per share. To encourage retail investment, Justdial had promised that they would buy back shares from retail investors at the IPO price if Justdial's share price fell sharply within the first six months.[14] By the close of the market on the day of the IPO, the majority of new investments had come from foreign institutional investors. On 5 August of the next year, Justdial's share price reached a high of INR 1,894.70, subsequently decreasing to the triple digits in 2015.[15]

Products and services

Justdial's "Justdial" service is a database of business listings that users can either access by phone or online. The company also operates "Justdial Social", a service that aggregates content from social media websites, TV broadcast, news, and other sources; and "Search Plus Service", a service that manages online transactions via the web and mobile apps.

Security Flaws

On 10th October 2019 Indian-based independent security researcher Ehraz Ahmed detected a major security flaw in Justdial’s Register API. The flaw allowed competent hackers to log into any Justdial account by simply placing the phone number in the username parameter. By doing so, this granted the hacker access to any person’s Justdial account. This vulnerability puts the user’s personal data at risk, but also compromises the user’s social profile since the hacker could use the system ID generated by exploiting the flaw to access the Just Dial Pay account, and post on the user’s social profile.[16][17][18]

Justdial acknowledged that there was a bug in one of its API.[16][19][20] There was no loss of any data or financial loss reported.[16][19]

See also

References
  1. "Company Overview of Justdial Limited". Bloomberg. 14 November 2016.
  2. "Just Dial bets on search plus service to boost revenues". NDTV Profit. 27 December 2013. Retrieved 2 March 2019.
  3. "Just Dial - Outcome of Board Meeting (AGM on Sept 24, 2014)". Money Control. 24 September 2014.
  4. "Justdial Financial Statement and Accounts". Economic times.
  5. "JustDial to hire more than 4,000 people for sales this year". Medianama. 24 February 2016.
  6. "VSS Mani, the man who dialed the right numbers". The Economic Times. 11 April 2011.
  7. "Just Dial: New World, New Game for VSS Mani". Forbes India. 15 September 2014.
  8. "Contact Us - Justdial". Justdial.
  9. Srinivasan, Supraja (2018). "Just Dial reports 80% improvement in EBITDA margin, revenues up 9% in third quarter". The Economic Times. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  10. "How Justdial became a Billion Dollar Company?". Delhi School of Internet Marketing. 2 June 2015. Retrieved 4 March 2019.
  11. "How Justdial founder VSS Mani built the 'Indian Google'". Moneycontrol. Retrieved 30 June 2020.
  12. "Success on call". www.businesstoday.in. Retrieved 30 June 2020.
  13. "Is Justdial late to the app party?". Outlook Business. 23 September 2015.
  14. "Justdial model similar to Google: management". 20 May 2013.
  15. "The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Just Dial Shares". 1 February 2016.
  16. "Exclusive: Justdial security flaw may allow hackers to breach pay accounts of 156 million users". Money Control. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  17. "Just Dial security flaw puts 156 million pay accounts at risk". The Tech Portal. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  18. "A bug in Indian local search app exposed over 156 million accounts". The Next Web. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  19. "JustDial Accounts Of 15 Crore Users Breached Via Security Flaw; JustDial Says No Financial Loss". Trak.in. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  20. "JustDial fixes bug that allowed hackers access". MCT Cybersafe. Retrieved 9 December 2019.
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