India's leading digital industry forum Alootechie changed its name to India Digital Review. We asked Mr. Satrajit Sen, Editor, India Digital Review what initiated the rebranding exercise. Satrajit is associated with the website for more than 3 years and he interviews leading publishers, media planners, brand marketers in the country and to discuss about their strategies and plans on online brand building.

Question: Alootechie was a catchy name. Why sudden rebranding?

Satrajit: The Online industry is evolving in India. Now we are moving from Digital to Mobile era. It was not the scene 6 years ago, when we launched Alootechie. People loved us in these years and we established ourselves as a trusted source of news related to Digital Marketing. However, with the emerging trends and the boom of the industry, we felt the need for a more serious, organized and professional name. And after brainstorming with all of our team members, we came up with this name.

Question: Does the name matter for a niche content site?

Satrajit: We would like to be known as a provider of news on Internet Marketing. Our focus is not just limited to Content or Technology. The name Alootechie helped us to become acceptable and create an awareness about our existence among readers and we loved even the modified name Aloo or AlooTikki which they affectionately called us by. So, even for a Content or Technology oriented site, the name is a way to make people understand what they are most likely to get there.

Question: You lost fans on FB, your page views also suffer. Was this considered while brainstorming?

Satrajit: We had to create a new FB page as they don’t allow the change of name of Fan page when the fanbase is over a certain numbers. Twitter handle was not affected. And, SEO ranking will take a significant time to reach where it was. However, these were no surprises for us. We anticipated this. And the motivation to change the name to Indian Digital Review and the subsequent benefits outperformed the temporary hit in terms of SEO ranking and Social Media.

Question: Okay. You always talk about business model of others. How does Indian Digital Review work? What is the monetization model?

Satrajit: Primarily, our monetization is advertising driven. We have certain other plans which will be implemented very soon. However, presently, it is only advertising.

Question: What are plans ahead? You are now into review of Hospitality and Education services as well.

Satrajit : We have identified that Hospitality and Education are sectors where there are lots of potentials. India Education Review provides information and resources to senior educators nationwide, carrying news, interviews, guest articles, case studies, information on training and developmental programs, scholarships and jobs. India Hospitality Review presents relevant information on hotels, restaurants, resorts and catering sectors.

We are not the first to move into these, there are other players also. However, we want to give readers a more transparent view which is reality based.

Question: Any plan to move into the Daily Deal space?

Satrajit: Our core strength is B2B. At this moment we are not thinking of experimenting with the B2C space.

Question: So, how has been the response so far to the rebranding?

Satrajit: To be honest, we never expected the kind of response we have got from our readers. Most reviews are very encouraging and readers appreciate the move as they can see the reason behind it. Some have been critical as they liked our earlier name so much. Overall, it is great to see reaction of readers who care about us. It motivates us like nothing else.