Monster Worldwide acquires sole ownership of Monster India

Mumbai: Monster Worldwide, the parent company of the leading global online careers property, MonsterÒ, and the world''s largest Yellow Pages advertising agency and one of the world''s largest recruitment advertising agency networks, has announced that it has acquired sole ownership of Monster India (www.monsterindia.com) through an agreement to buy out its original partner in the joint venture, a subsidiary of Australia-based ecorp Limited.

As part of the deal, Monster Worldwide has also assumed full ownership of Monster''s operations in Hong Kong and Singapore and increased its overall stake in the Asia Pacific region. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Launched in March 2001, Monster India is a leading online provider of hiring and career-management services for companies and job seekers in India. Monster India has shown significant year-upon-year growth in unique visitors to its Web site and the number of resumes in its database. Monster India received more than 2.9 million unique visitors in October 2003, as per Red Sheriff, an independent third party traffic-auditing agency. Monster India also has the trust of more than 710,000 resumes in its database.

"Securing full ownership of Monster India is in keeping with our strategic plan to drive Monster''s expansion and growth in foreign markets such as India where we see opportunity for growth now and in the future," says Andrew J McKelvey, chairman and CEO, Monster Worldwide.

"The fact that Monster India is now a fully owned subsidiary of Monster strengthens our commitment to becoming the preferred provider of online recruitment services in India," says Arun Tadanki, country manager, Monster India. "It also paves the way for us to increase our sales and marketing investment in India, so we can generate even stronger brand awareness and further enhance our overall competitive position in the marketplace."

Monster India currently works with more than 1,000 clients from six sales offices located in Pune, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai.