Rocket Internet has a go at job classifieds with launch of Everjobs

Rocket Internet churned out a new startup today with the launch of Everjobs. It’s a jobs classifieds site that launches first in Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

Though the name is new, the site actually stems from Rocket’s own Work.com.mm, the Myanmar-only jobs site that rolled out in June 2012. That gives Everjobs a rolling start in Myanmar. Everjobs co-founder Ronald Schuurs tells Tech in Asia that the Myanmar site – which will retain its old name and URL for the time being – is now getting 150 new job-seekers signing up each day, 140,000 unique visits per month, and it just crossed one million monthly page-views.

Schuurs says that the Myanmar site reached that milestone with mostly organic, word-of-mouth growth, though Rocket Internet is now chasing after new users in the country with online advertisements. He anticipates quicker growth for Everjobs in Sri Lanka thanks to more widespread web usage. “We want to be faster [… and] a bit more ambitious than we were with Myanmar.”

New frontiers

Schuurs says that the Everjobs launch in these two nations fits in with Rocket Internet’s strategy of looking to seize fast growth in what he calls “frontier markets” – places like Myanmar, Pakistan, or Bangladesh where web adoption is growing fast. “They’re a bit more overlooked compared to India or China,” he adds. And so Rocket Internet is looking ahead to the next few years of web growth, aiming to become the dominant player in a nascent market.

Everjobs already has 15 staffers in Myanmar thanks to the early start of Work.com.mm; so far in Sri Lanka it has three local personnel.

Everjobs will expand to more emerging markets in Asia in due course, but the next roll-out will be to an undisclosed nation in Africa in late March or early April.

Berlin-based startup dynamo Rocket Internet now has five startups operating in Myanmar: Carmudi, Lamudi, Kaymu, Everjobs, and Daraz. That last one is an Amazon-like ecommerce store that first started in Pakistan and then ventured into Myanmar late last year.

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