Here’s what I found: Ladies and Gentlemen, the country’s oldest and most efficient referral program is the Communist Party of India. The farmers told me they pay Rs 12 per person per month for membership, that’s Rs 144 per year. Every person, they refer they get back Re 1 which is not cash back, but a credit for free food, and transport to such mass networking events like these rallies. Assume you enrolled 10 people, you get a credit of Rs 10 against the above. participation in these mass events are at Rs 100 per person, taken as transport cost, food and incidentals. So if you got 100 people into the party, you’d go for free, as the farmer I spoke to mentioned.

The next day, the papers mentioned 10 lakh people had attended. that’s 1 mill, folks!! now the math. Rs 14.40 crore as yearly membership, another Rs 10 crore from funds raised for attending the rally, so we are looking at Rs 24.40 crore. Now the costs! the bus syndicate complained to the same paper that their buses were commandeered, I don’t know the losses the railways incurred, so the net cost was only for the canteen, PA system, and stage arrangements - At this scale, I’d hazard it to be about Rs 1.50 crore.
so net -net- the party gets almost Rs 22 Crore from this exercise. Good fund raising for an election, and I’m just scratching the surface, not to mention, great media coverage, motivated troops, and an opportunity to see the sights of a big city almost FOC.

Can’t think of a better referral model, question is what business idea can it support?

50 for 99 might categorize you with none other than MLM, seriously impacting your credibility. Also the nuisance value of MLMs might rub you off on the wrong way.

1. The first 10,000 would be easier (provided some value gained to user). The challenge would be next paid Rs. 99 users. In India I have only witnessed such participation for “free” subscriptions.

2. Don’t have the numbers but in Indian scenario the delta of value provided that is Rs. 99 and the benefits (a or b) achieved is much higher.
Outside India user benefit-> Rs. 99 X a
India user benefit-> Rs. 99 X b

I think b >>> a to get this going.

3. Also 50 % of referral fee looks quite high to me.

4. I would concentrate on “b” to get this going. Beleive me pal its a tough task to get subscription from Indian users specially on the Web.

Best of luck.

Sanjay G

- A very differentiated benefit — this has to be really significant, at least at perceptual level. Both to trigger a referral, and for the referral to get accepted. Simple communication.

- Sharp target — when i get a mail prompting me to refer, I should see it and say “bang! sanjay will love this” — inspiring that reaction might be far more useful than the monetary benefit (very different from MLM — i would liken that more to affiliate marketing in the sense of being purely incentive driven)

- Then there is this issue of whether the population is viral at all, identifying the mavens and sneezers — I think this might be the part that has been weak, because the gap in viral marketing out here seems to be across campaigns and categories.

Slightly tangential but similar philosophy - Indian IT firms using employee referral scheme

Amar

They started with $99 for a pro account when their business started and offered a $5 kickback for each extra person a subscriber brings in. $99 was an annual fee - not sure if your Rs 99 is annual or lifetime. One of the best ways to expand to your million is to add a monetary incentive for the subscriber and you. In Smugmug’s case, the $5 kickback is not offered in cash - it applies to $5 off for your next year’s subscription - this ensures that the person buys next yr’s fee at a discount thereby increasing customer stickiness for the site too (if you gave Rs 50 in cash back, it can be used for other purchases and may not funnel into renenwal of your own site subscription).

Finally, this year, smugmug increased their annual fee from $99 to $140, but agreed to ‘grandfather’ their existing customers - if they signed up for the next year by Jan 21 2006, their old rate of $99 would remain as long as possible (no legal commitments, just goodwill).

Again, as you mentioned, all of this totally depends on the content of your site. if it is just a general social networking site, it may not warrant this value.

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-cr