Will portals dedicated exclusively to women work in India? Consider this. In a bid to differentiate its offering, Jobstreet.com - a Malaysia-based online recruitment portal - recently launched a job portal, indiwo.com, which caters specifically to women.

The company has a database of around 4-5 million resumes worldwide (around 2 million from India), of which at least 20-25 per cent belong to women. The portal claims to register 13,000-15,000 unique women visitors per day.

Anand Iyer, CEO, Jobstreet, says: "Companies like Pepsi, HP and other MNCs want women as part of their diversity programme. With attrition affecting all industry verticals, these companies realise there are enough qualified women who have quit due to family reasons and hence want them back."

The company, however, is not first portal to have launched a dedicated platform for women. Avtariwin.com, launched in 2005, was the first site meant exclusively for women professionals - seeking only part-time or flexi-time assignments.

Saundarya Rajesh, chief executive, Avtar Career Creators says: "This was in response to an acute need felt by both parties - i.e industry on the one hand and women professionals on the other. The former wanted access to talent which was trained and developed and was not easily allured by perks
such as a better pay package, while the latter sought challenging, interesting assignments."

The site has 4,000 women professional resumes and aims to reach a target of 100,000 market within the next two years. The company claims to have placed over 450 women professionals till date.

Do such niche portals work? Ganesh Shermon, partner, head of human capital advisory services, KPMG says: "Globally there are hardly any websites that will differentiate on gender, or ethnicity, as these are considered to be sensitive issues."

He adds: "There are new age economy jobs coming in. If there is a job portal that specifically caters to such differentiation, then there is a definite segment that will look at such option. However, this does not give the company a first-mover advantage. As others can - in no time - create a sister concern portal and shift those specific jobs onto that platform."