StartupDunia » India portals

Expedia acquires TravelGuru stake - No Deal

pranav — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:37:52 +0000

Nikhil has an update from TravelGuru CEO Ashwin Damera that ongoing rumors of Expedia acquiring majority stake in TravelGuru for $17 million are mere speculation and that no deal has been signed.

Just like everyone else reported, a $17 million for a majority stake would be just like a desperate deal. Something seemed very odd about the numbers.

Comments

July 2, 2008, Sonia Malhotra commented: $17 million for majority stake in travelguru was unbelievable at the first stage only. Travelguru acquired desiya for $25million & after that getting valued was something not possible. Thanks for clearing out the rumour Sonia Malhotra www.GhumiChale.com India's First Hotels Comparison Engine

TravelGuru acquires Desiya for Rs 100 crore ($25 million)

Chinese firm TenCent signs deal to acquire 50% of MIH India Global

pranav — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:10:07 +0000

TenCent Holdings, a leading Chinese portal, has secured an option to acquire upto 50% of MIH India Global Ltd. MIH operates the portals iBibo, Dwaar and OneFamily.

TenCent plans to invest $7.5 million in MIH India Global over the next three years.

MIH India Global is backed by media conglomerate Naspers, which, also owns a 35.5% stake in TenCent. Nice !!

via release

Comments

June 20, 2008, Sonia Malhotra commented: $ 7.5 Million for 50% stake in MIH seems unbelievable......so many startups get this much in their first round itself. There's much more than seen here. I think the Balti is worth more than that..... :-) Sonia Malhotra Internetpreneur www.GhumiChale.com India's First Hotels Comparison Engine

Yahoo India launches Local Beta, OrderMonger plans expansion

pranav — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 23:40:07 +0000

Yahoo India has launched Local, a local search site for Indian cities. The service is currently available for Delhi-NCR, Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai and provides information like business listings, maps, directions, local events, movies etc. You can review listings, mark businesses on the map and share info with others.

While the site is useful, I wonder why Yahoo hasnt seeded content from their Yahoo OurCity site. Having two different sites, both targetted locally, doesnt make much sense - even though there may be differentiation in terms of content.

OrderMonger, a Hyderabad based startup, which provides web based ordering for food, flowers and groceries, is planning to expand to four additional cities during the next year. They plan to raise Rs 2 crores and create three separate websites for each category. As per Krishna Natarajan, CEO, they hope to make Rs. 40 lakhs from the web based flowers business this year.

via BS

AOL India launches mens portal, Asylum.in

pranav — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:01:10 +0000

AOL India has launched an Indianized version of their international men’s portal,Â Asylum.

Here’s how they describe themselves:

Men want more than just photos of women.OK, maybe not much more, but at Asylum we’ve got something for all mankind.

Well, hmm..if they only knew Indian men .

Anyways, so if you want to learn how to make a beer can chicken or read about the man who survived a snake bite on his penis, head over to Asylum.

Google - Do Evil as you see fit

pranav — Wed, 28 May 2008 01:40:38 +0000

Google’s “Do No Evil” mantra would need no introduction to most of you. For those of you, who need to know more about their mantra and its origins, there are hundreds of online articles that explain the same.

While Google has enjoyed immense PR and popularity riding on the back of this mantra, some of its recent actions dont necessarily abide by this “Do No Evil” philosophy. First there was the China censorship, then was the furor related to self promotion of Google products in search results and then Google revealed details about an Orkut user to Brazilian authorities.

In a similar recent incident, Google revealed details about an Orkut user to Indian authorities, which resulted in his arrest. The man was found guilty of writing hate content in the “I hate Sonia Gandhi” community on Orkut.

Ok, I understand. In order to operate and abide by Indian penal laws, they were obligated to reveal the details of the user to the Indian authorities. India is too crucial a market for them and being a little evil helps them keep the truce with the Indian legal system.

But when I read about Google’s counterpoint to the $1 billion lawsuit brought on by ViaCom, I was appalled & shocked by the sheer double standards that Google chooses to operate by. As per Google, Viacom’s lawsuit

“threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment and political and artistic expression”

What the fuck ? You seek refuge of “political expression“and “threatens legitimateÂ exchange of information” to fight a lawsuit. And then you turn in those same folks who are expressing themselves on Orkut ?

Google is acting like a self serving, selfish, manipulative, evil bitch. And apparently, this isnt the very first time they’ve resorted to such hypocritical behavior. I dont think this will be their last either.

Shame on you Google. Take a note or two from RIM, for that matter - at least they have the balls not to rat out on their users.

Comments

May 28, 2008, tech2blog commented: yes its true
May 28, 2008, divakar commented: Hey Pranav, Good for read, but was not expecting this article to feature on www.startupdunia.com
May 28, 2008, Ryan George commented: Hi Pranav, I beleive you've strongly gone overboard with your criticism of Google. The keyword to look out for here is 'legitimate'. As long as expression you make is within the realms of decency, it's ok...but the moment one tries to tamper with these norms, they need to be reprimanded. You yourself go on to give the reason for Google's reason for the disclosure. India is too big a business for Google when it comes to Orkut & no able businessman at that will let go of it. After all it's plain economics...right??
May 28, 2008, Saad commented: Pranav, I think you have gone a lil overboard with your views on the blog. I was surprised to this on your blog. I agree to some extend on the double standards of google. But as Ryan pointed out there should be some thing which ran behind the screen which resulted in the disclosure of Orkut profiles.
May 28, 2008, pranav commented: guys, If you felt I went a little overboard, it is possible. I just feel very strongly about such privacy issues. Imagine if tomorrow, Google turns in your details to the authorities for some stuff you might write on Orkut. What pisses me more is the double standards. You quote things to fend off a $1 billion lawsuit, but easily disregard them when and as needed ?
May 28, 2008, Rabi commented: I think pranav, to some extent you are correct. But the point is, usually the tag lines such as 'don't be evil' came when Google was a startup and it had an idea which it wanted to implement as a free source of info. So it was a gud market strategy to put up tag lines such as this, which offcourse offended Microsoft. Now Google is so big and powerful that it can do anything (like any big business but unlike some others as u pointed ITM), to realize its true dreams! I'm also a bit disappointed by the way Google has behaved but I hope in the future they would be more sensible regarding their core issues.
May 28, 2008, Amit commented: Very well said. I think you haven't gone overboard at all. Companies get big and then the only motive remains is to stay on top, NO MATTER WHAT. I liked that you pointed out RIM as its doing a good thing. However there is always that fine line between doing the right thing and being righteous. Terrorism versus giving up my privacy a little bit to control terrorism, I'll prefer the latter. But with Google, the double standards are just outrageous and the fact is that they will continue to do it because they can!
May 28, 2008, pranav commented: A lot of people (Arrington included) are wondering if Google is getting too big. Google has started to dominate search to such an extent that it has people wondering - is Google becoming the next Microsoft ?
May 29, 2008, Rabi commented: I Guess, if Android works in the desired way for google, then it would be their 2nd biggest innovation! One was enough to give Nightmares to Microsoft, 2nd one (if successful) may very well beat it!!
June 28, 2008, WANDERER commented: Finally, someone who has mentioned the obvious, Google, and all of it's power. Just like the Firefox hoax, put down Microsoft until the sun comes up, but while you weren't looking Google and Firefox grew so big that they dwarf Microsoft in comparison. Google has it's fingers in everything now and that is a shame. Google will one day be the internet, operating system, iphone etc etc. so beware of what was once the good guy. As for Firefox, well it leaves me wondering especially with the new FF3. Microsoft invented windows and all things that run or ran on it, the little guy copied and is now the big guy.

Web18 to launch horizontal portal ?

pranav — Wed, 14 May 2008 21:56:37 +0000

Mint reports that Web18 is to launch a horizontal portal, tapping into data from the rest of the sites in its portfolio. They already have a pretty good portfolio spanning across finance, travel, sports, jobs, entertainment etc. So, it wont take too much effort in getting section specific content.

Insiders revealed that the site is likely to launch later this month and an email service will be bundled with the portal. In that case, Web18 will be headed for a direct competition with Rediff, IndiaTimes, Sify, Yahoo India etc.

Comments

May 15, 2008, Rabi Gupta commented: I think Web 18 is unlike any other Indian portal. They have captured the market quite beautifully in recent times. Be it making their own trademark websites like ibnlive.com or acquiring vertical masters such as moneycontrol.com. More than that they have advertised all of thier products such that even if you are using any one of these websites you know each one of them. Now this moves seems to be a very interesting and intelligent one, as Web18 will not need to advertise heavily for this horizontal portal and success of this seems obvious.
May 22, 2008, pranav commented: @rabi, they have indeed developed quite a broad and interesting portfolio of websites. Success isnt obvious because they do seem to be spending quite a bit on content syndication.

Times of India plans IPO

pranav — Mon, 12 May 2008 03:56:06 +0000

Bennet, Coleman & Co., owners of IndiaTimes portal and Times Of India, are planning an IPO listing. The listing is likely to happen within the next year as per insider sources.

The IPO plan is being linked to retention plans for some of the leading editors in the group who are being wooed by rival newspapers with offers of stock options.

A lot will depend on how the global and Indian economy shape up.

via BS

Yahoo India launches Glue Pages Beta

pranav — Fri, 09 May 2008 01:36:27 +0000

Yahoo India has launched a new concept called ‘Glue Pages‘ for users of Yahoo India search. ‘Glue pages’ aggregates text, images, video from across the web in various verticals like health, sports, entertainment, travel etc. and presents a ‘visual’ search results page. The goal is to provide a broad coverage of search results across a variety of information sources.

For example, a search for ‘diabetes’ gives you results from WebMD, HowStuffWorks, Yahoo Groups, Google Blog search, Yahoo Answers etc. Regular search results, of course, are also included.

As the beta evolves, the goal is to create topical pages built and maintained by subject matter experts. This concept is currently live only on the Yahoo India page and probably will be rolled out elsewhere, depending on the results observed for Yahoo India.

As content gets more distributed across various silos on the web, such a search definitely has its uses. For instance, Yahoo Groups and Yahoo Answers have a wealth of information, which, sometimes dont reflect towards the top of the search results. But then, it also puts forth the question - if I am searching for ‘diabetes’, I would first go and search in WebMD about ‘diabetes’ - why would I go searching for ‘dibetes’ on Glue pages when such a good vertical for health topics already exists ?

None the less, Yahoo is finally waking up from its slumber and innovating — its a good sign. Lets see how well Glue pages is received by the public.

Sify to list in India, plans renewed online games portal

pranav — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 04:46:41 +0000

Nasdaq listed Sify is planning to raise funds by listing on the Indian stock market. The funds will help expand to 2nd and 3rd tier cities in India and open additional data centers.

I’m not sure if this statistic was released by them before - they have 2,15,000 broadband customers. As per CEO Raju Vegesna, consumer internet is taking more time than expected to develop big numbers in the country.

They also plan to launch a renewed gaming zone on their portal.

via ET.

Google Movies India - Find Theaters and showtimes in your city

pranav — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:47:05 +0000

Google India has launched a movies section. You can search for theaters and movies in your city. Filter by movie name, movie popularity of theater distance.

Check it out at www.google.co.in/movies . Via Labnol / Prashant.

Comments

April 25, 2008, Abhinov Agarwal commented: A better page to visit for movies : http://asklaila.com/article/Bangalore/First+day%2C+first+show%3A+Bangalore/282/
April 25, 2008, amit commented: Looks like a hobby project- put together over couple of days.

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TechTribe excelling at content piracy

pranav — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:37:18 +0000

TechTribe is one of the first professional networking sites to be launched in India. Last year, they secured funding from Canaan Partners, amongst other VC’s.

I’d hardly visited their site ever. Till yesterday, that is. Yesterday, it came to my attention that they are engaging in shoddy act of content piracy - not just content from StartupDunia but lot of other blogs as well.

Here’s how it works - registered users can sign up to blog feeds as part of their profile/dashboard. And instead of showing a small summary of the blog feed, TechTribe displays the entire story in such a spurious manner that it seems as if the TechTribe user has published the story.

See the screenshot below for an example. One of my recent blog posts shows up as if its “published by” some Ranvir Batra.

You might think I’m making a big deal of it, but let me tell you that I debated quite a bit if I should write this post. I got some moderate traffic from the site and so if they yank my posts I’d stand to lose. At the risk of losing this added traffic, I’m writing about this unethical behavior. Why ?

Because I think what TechTribe is doing is morally and ethically repugnant.

It takes a lot of time and energy to write these blog posts. By republishing entire blog posts, they increase their own page-views, stickiness and get to offer ‘free’ content to their users. While I dont know about other bloggers, I find this distasteful. Not once have I been notified in any manner that my blog posts are being republished on their site in their entirety. Of course, they cant control what blog feeds their users sign up for. But hey, here’s a start - why not publish only a small excerpt as opposed to the entire post ? They should have done due diligence that entire blog posts (which are copyrighted by the way) are being re-published on their site.

This is not ‘fair usage’ as per copyright law. If this continues, I’m seriously thinking about looking at various legal options for suing their asses.

Update:Â See Sarah’s awesome post on ReadWriteWeb about this very topic. It discusses whether an external web service has the right to appropriate a blogger’s RSS feeds and build their own brand around the blog content. Exactly what the suckers at TechTribe are doing.

Comments

April 15, 2008, snehal commented: i understand your concern.....but what about google reader that shows the complete blog content for all the blogs that I have subscribed too. I only visit the actual blog sites when I want to add a comment just like this one. I think if they linking back to you and showing the actual source as startupdunia.com, that should be okay. another way to control this would be to have your RSS feed only contain some part of the post...but would be quite irritating for users who are already reading your posts from blog readers. overall i feel you are gaining more mind share this way though not direct users....mind share i feel is a big plus...just my 2 cents....keep up the great work dude!
April 15, 2008, pranav commented: snehal, Google reader is not an end-user / destination site. Google reader is just a web based feed reader - more of a utility app. and I'm not conflicted about mindshare-direct users. Several sites syndicate content from my blog on and off. I have no problems in having my blog posts republished with permission or notification. But if you do it in some shady manner - to increase your own stickiness - you bet I'm gonna be pissed.
April 15, 2008, Ram commented: I checked the site and what they are doing is content theft in the name of community. They are nothing but a spam blog network. You should send them a DMCA notice to take down your content. Shame on these guys, profiting from some one else's content is just a bad business model. By the way who funded them for this content theft idea.
April 15, 2008, Ram commented: There are a lot of blog feeds syndicated including QOT, Trak.in, Codinghorror, Zen habits and more. Don't know whether these people know or not
April 15, 2008, Nishi/Chillibreeze commented: Plagiarism was always a serious issue. It is becoming much more rampant nowadays. We often have incidents where other content providers steal our home page content from Chillibreeze.com. Belive it or not, some have even tried to swipe our About Us page content with a few small tweaks:) We write to them and they take it off- just like that! Check out this blog post by Kamla Bhat- http://kamlabhattshow.com/blog/2008/04/09/msn-s-response-to-plagiarized-content/ That was a small para, but some websites seem to think they can make a living out of stealing content from other websites. And the worst part is they might even get away with it! The need of the hour is an effective plagiarism detection tool/software that is totally foolproof! Coming to think of it, isn't that a great idea for a startup!
April 15, 2008, Debashish commented: Great Expose! I also invite you to read this post of mine :)
April 16, 2008, Vishwas commented: hmm, so google reader is not content theft today, but if they start putting ads on their interface tomorrow, they will become one? Looks like the image above does have credit to startup dunia as original source. PS: rss feed interface allows you to control how much (or how little) of the post goes into the feed, and if the user needs to click there to come back read the full post - may be you want to use that...
April 16, 2008, Raghu commented: Hi pranav!.. i noticed that article of yours on techtribe... it seemed to me as if you guys have a tie-up !! bcoz they had your full article(s) along with the comments too! by the way what do you think they should have done to give the due credit back to startupdunia in the right measure??
April 16, 2008, Ayan commented: Why not snip your RSS feed ? Rather than publishing the entire article with comments on RSS feed, publish only a snapshot that will drive more traffic to your website and stop people is using your article in its entirety.
April 16, 2008, pranav commented: @vishwas - google reader doesnt splash full feeds on their home page. if techtribe wants to be a RSS reader, they can keep these feeds hidden from the general community on the site. And dont be mistaken, giving credit back to StartupDunia does not give them the right to publish entire posts. @raghu - i'm not pissed because they didnt give credit but because (i) they are re-publishing full posts && (ii) no one ever bothered to notify me my full posts are being republished @ayan - I know RSS feeds can be snipped. If you blog, you'll realize that full posts turn out to be better for the audience than snips.
April 16, 2008, Chandra commented: I don't think we can do much about blocking the content theft, but only thing we can do in a situation like this, where we know who is pulling our content, is to block the specific domain or IP address from which these guys are accessing the feeds. Thats really bad on the part of TechTribe guys. It really looks like the TechTribe user has written that article. They need to show the source clearly and the digg like voting system should clearly say these are the articles added from feeds and not actually written by the users.
April 17, 2008, Rohit (techTribe) commented: Pranav, First and foremost, let me clearly state that techTribe's intent is NOT to plagiarilze content so we or the members can claim it as their own work. The use of articles and feeds on techTribe is so members can share what they've written, or they've liked reading - so others can read it and benefit - but not take credit away from the author. With feeds, we have tried to make sure the people reeding a feed can clearly see who the original author was. If we look at the screenshot you posted, there is the TOP HEADER, where right below the name of the the blog, it clearly says "Originally posted by Startup Dunia" - this is a link to the original blog. At the bottom of the post, it has the same - and says "View original post by pranav" - which is again a link. Maybe we can think about whether we should entirely remove the name of the person who uploaded the feed (Ranbir Batra in this case) so there is no confusion whatsoever. As for clipping the feed so it only takes a paragraph or two, we have many members who post their own feeds, and people who would like to have their entire feeds posted on techTribe. If we were to restrict ALL feeds to a certain character limit, we would not support them. There are many partial feeds on techTribe as you would like, and they are controlled by the original blogger themselves. When defining the feed, they've chosen to restrict it to a preview format only. Other suggestions are welcome - i can easily be reached at rohit at techtribe. techTribe's goal is to get articles such as the ones you've written to the community at large, and members do that by haring what they like reading. As you said yourself, this helps drive traffic to the blogger's site as well. In a handful of cases, where there is the entire post being published due to a full RSS feed that the blogger would like removed, we've always done so immediately upon being notified of such issues - yours was removed yesterday as well.
April 17, 2008, pranav commented: Rohit, thanks for stopping by and the clarification. While it may not be TechTribe's intention to plagiarize content, the way in which the feed content is presented is dubious at best. For instance, see the first screenshot above and tell me whether you find anything wrong with the way its presented. If I am a 3rd person, to me, it gives the impression as if the Techtribe user (Ranvir batra in this case) has authored the article. While I am aware of clipping my own feed, I feel I should be in control and able to make that call. About not clipping all feeds on TechTribe to accommodate member blogs, I dont buy your argument. I dont see why all user blogs cant be clipped (including member feeds). Going by your comment above, it would be help drive traffic to their own blog as well. Even 2-3 paragraphs from the original article should be enough to highlight the gist of the article to the community at large. Interested users can then always hop on to the member's blog for further reading While other bloggers may see benefit in getting the additional traffic, I dont. The way I see it - you guys benefit more at my expense. After writing this post, I got emails from a couple of bloggers, who'd been in a similar scenario and had asked that their feeds be removed from TechTribe. If that is indeed the case, it should have set off some bells --that if several folks are complaining, probably this practice needs to be changed.
April 17, 2008, Jonathan Bailey commented: I've been quietly following this thread for much of the day but I ahve to say that I am appalled at Techtribe's response. To demand that bloggers truncate their feed when it is their responsibility to ensure that they are using other people's content in an ethical and legal manner is an outright insult. I know many services that make legitimate mistakes in this area, but none, not even Shyftr, have tried to put the blame no bloggers who just want to serve their readers. In this regard, I would strongly encourage you to look at how sites such as Digg and Reddit handle these issues. They are sites that have managed to build great audiences using other people's content but without actually duplicating the feed. I am sorry for my harsh tone, but that is an irresponsible reply to some very serious and legitimate concerns about your service...
April 18, 2008, Rohit (techTribe) commented: Pranav, I see your point about the main splash page showing the name of the poster. I suggested in my response that we could look at changing that to make sure there's no confusion. We've received all of 2 requests from bloggers about their entire feeds published over the last 6 months, and we'll always removed the feeds when brought to our attention. Jonathan - we are not demanding that bloggers terminate their feed. My response was that we also have bloggers who would like their entire feed present. We are happy to take a look at how others do it - i know we aren't the only site facing this challenge.
April 18, 2008, Anon commented: Hi Pranav, Inspite of all the mistakes Rohit does not seem to feel that what they are doing is wrong. A rose is a rose is a rose by any name. Who knows probably Techtribe is being kicked in tis asses by its VC to show some real traffic. Giving credit back to StartupDunia does not give them the right to publish entire posts. It is appalling to find Rohit's reply. Maybe Techtribe is on its way to deadpool!

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iBibo owned Dwaar launches travel aggregator

pranav — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 15:28:21 +0000

iBibo owned Dwaar has launched a travel aggregator, which gets flight information from different airlines and OTA’s. They crawl data from various airline sites, Ezeego, Cleartrip, Travelguru, MakeMyTrip and Yatra but since the last two days, MakeMyTrip and Yatra have blocked their crawler. After displaying the results, users are redirected to the parent site for booking the flight. While the site works fine in IE, it failed to render correctly in Firefox.Its good to have such additional meta engines in the Indian travel market, which has been flooded with airlines and OTAs. I used ixiGo extensively during my recent India travel and was pretty darn pleased with the whole experience.

Comments

April 3, 2008, Nilesh Trivedi commented: IRCTC's monthly statistics are out. Here are some excerpts from it: http://nileshtrivedi.in/blog/2008/04/04/payment-statistics-from-irctc/
April 4, 2008, Omkar Jadhav commented: I just took a look at dwaar travel. It looks pretty nice. The rail search was impressive. You feel the lack of data on airline OTAs but the site is very fast and the UI rocks. It definitely fills a void in Indian opnline travel space. BTW I had no issues with firefox.
April 10, 2008, divakar commented: How different are they from IXIGO.com ?
August 17, 2008, bpo company india commented: Hey Every one, I really feel that this blog is very appreciable. But can any one here help me to find or suggest me any cheap hotel in Jodhpur. Please I will really be very much thankful to receive the response.

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Sulekha plans IPO in 2009

pranav — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 20:07:19 +0000

I’ve been procastinating to write this post for a long time now. However, when I read about Sulekha’s IPO plans for 2009, I knew there just wouldnt be a better time.

As per a BS story, Sulekha plans to launch an IPO in 2009 targetting revenues of $ 30 million. The company is also planning to expand services to 40 new Tier II & Tier III cities in India. They currently serve 8 Indian cities, 14 cities in the US and one in Canada.

Wow !! From its fluke, humble beginnings to an impending IPO. Sulekha has definitely come a long way in a short span of time. As a regular Sulekha user, I’ve personally witnessed the transitions it has gone through over the past few years and wanted to chime in.

Sulekha was founded in 2001, during the post-bubble era. It originated as a place for people to post short stories and showcase their creative writing skills. With time, the popularity, usage and traffic to the site grew. The site soon developed a strong, loyal user base who spent a large amount of their online time on Sulekha, generating what is, one of the biggest user generated online Indian content repositories.

Soon, Sulekha launched classifieds, which was a huge hit with the US based NRI population. There was a pressing need for such a service, with a nation wide reach, amongst the burgeoning Indian population in the US. At its peak, Sulekha classifieds served 32 + cities across US and Canada. The company transitioned from a pure content focussed site into a city portal covering city specific classifieds, events and even ticket bookings for events.

Over the years, Sulekha has evolved extensively and has continously tried to enter into new business areas and capitalize upon the huge user base it has built over the years. Along the way, there were several hits and several misses:

Hits:

Several new initiatives like blogs, movies, travel have become quite popular
Published books with Penguin, using the user generated content on the site
Online petitions for issues affecting the wider Indian population in the US
Mobile initiatives launched by the company have become popular in India

Misses:

Sections like matrimony, real estate, petitions, e-cards etc. were scrapped
In an effort to serve the most profitable cities, the number of US cities was dropped from 32 + to about 14
Sulekha launched classifieds via an offline, print channel in Indian grocery stores. Based on my research, this model doesnt seem to have clicked

Challenges for Sulekha going forward:

Historically, Sulekha has tried to experiment, evolve and enter new markets. Often times, it has been at the cost of alienating the very same loyal user base that helped build the site. At one time, ads were so prevalent and obtrusive on the site that Sulekha could have given Rediff a run for its money. Usability was put on the backburner and it ended up hurting the site’s reputation.

After capturing the Indian market in the US, they expanded to cover other international cities, which have a considerable Indian population. They also expanded into the Indian market, hoping to replicate their succcess in the US, in the Indian market. However, in a way, the site became a victim of its own rabid growth. It appeared as if they’d taken a bite bigger than what they could chew. The international expansion plan was quickly dropped. The number of US-Canandian cities was dropped from 32+ to 14.Â In the context of the Indian market, the Sulekha brand has a big obstacle - as Rajiv@WATBlog points out, Sulekha is still perceived as a “NRI portal”. This doesnt bode well at all if they’re hoping for success in the Indian market.

In the midst of all this experimentation, Sulekha has morphed itself into this hodgepodge of semi-social networking wannabe, local classifieds, yellow pages, UGC based portal hoping to “Connect Indians” in the true sense. In a way, it seems as if they’ve lost their identity and are confused about what actually is their biggest asset. If you were to ask me, they should spin off the various sections into different entities - user generated content like short stories, blogs etc into one, local classifieds into another, yellow pages in yet another. And finally, get real and get rid of the shitty ’social network’ concept - you’re not Facebook or LinkedIn for that matter.

Recent traffic details indicate a not-so-rosy picture. As per Compete, Y-o-Y traffic to Sulekha dipped by about 25%.

Lets see how the IPO plans pan out for Sulekha - after all, a lot will be guided by how well the market is doing as well.

Comments

March 25, 2008, Anonymous commented: Sulekha is well known for creating mirror blogs in their network and profiting from others work. Example: http://jupiterjuice.blogspot.com/2006/05/leave-me-alone.html See the comments in this post. Also they sell some blog posts of their bloggers to news papers with out the consent of authors.
March 31, 2008, pranav commented: with such things, they're shooting themselves in their foot - not to mention tarnishing their reputation as well.

No takers for ByIndia.com

pranav — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:38:16 +0000

ByIndia.com was recently put up for auction on eBay.
The auction ended on February 29th with zero bids received. Apparently, there were no takers for this “start Indian social media network”.

Comments

March 27, 2008, Aayush Puri commented: 500K USD...well thats pretty optimistic!
March 31, 2008, Sitheesh commented: Looks like the most recent eBay listing for ByIndia did indeed sell. For a half a million, no less.

India Online - from a Global perspective

pranav — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:35:28 +0000

Erick@Techcrunch had an interesting post - The Internet from a global perspective. While US had the maximum number of Internet users (161.6 million), China was catching up fast (96 million).

With a user base of 25.2 million users, India came in at the 8th position. We (me included) keep whining about how Internet penetration in India is still negligible, but if you look at it from a global perspective, even with the pitiful penetration, we managed to come in at number 8. If the penetration increases by only 10% this year (wishful thinking), we’ll very easily jump two places in this list.

If you see the above penetration in terms of percentage of population, the table looks like below:

US - 53 %

china - 7.2 %

japan - 42.3%

germany - 40%

uk - 53.3%

france - 43.2%

south korea - 53%

India - 2.23%

And you can see exactly why China and India offer such a huge room for growth. The world’s most populous nations and the Internet penetration is still in single digits. Thanks to the forward looking communist regime, China is making tremendous progress in the Internet front (disregarding the online censorship, ‘great firewall’ etc.). Sadly, such aggressive efforts are still missing in India. The Indian Government’s initiative last year - “2007 - year of the broadband” was a big disappointment. Subscriber base grew at a much slower rate than projected. We need to act & act fast.

Another interesting slide from the TC post was how home grown players in several countries are more popular than the Internet biggies.

Of course, the common thread is that all of the above are non-English speaking countries.

For the Indian market I’d say that the top 3 would be Yahoo India, Rediff and Google (all Google network sites included). In fact, a similar trend has also been observed in the Indian Web 2.0 market - global Web 2.0 companies have captured more Indian users than home grown players.I guess majority of the current, online Indian population is English speaking and that explains why they’ve latched on to the Western Internet portals.
As more non English speaking Indian users come online, do you think it will tip the usage in favor of home grown sites like Guruji and OneIndia ?

Comments

March 23, 2008, Cyril Gupta commented: Excellent review. I think there is plenty of growth for content in local languages, but rediff may not be the winner. I expect a sort of micro-localization to occur, in which the winners will be local companies run by people who have a deeper understanding of the local culture and expectations. It will be interesting to see what really happens. :)
March 23, 2008, Jagannath commented: India has sheer numbers :D but if quality and speed of connections were even given small weightage India would have completely vanished from any stats... so pathetic are our broadband connections :(
March 27, 2008, Jay commented: Anyway, I don't often see a lot of good coming out of the internet usage that is being done. People can use something like orkut for good, but all they do is put up their rock star-like photos and have found another forum for gossiping.
March 28, 2008, dDude commented: excellent review - i feel india is at an advantage right now cause it has very less broadband users compared to other big nations. this proves there is a huge potential to grow and even with this less numbers we are rocking the internet space. imagine what it would be when broadband and wireless access is easily available in india?
March 31, 2008, pranav commented: @jagannath - I agree..this report doesnt include the speed / quality of the connections. If so, Japan and S Korea would be topping the charts.. and India might not have appeared in the list at all. @cyril - you present an interesting perspective -- my question is -- will the Internet penetration ever drill down to those levels ? @dDude - yes..there is immense room for growth.

Somebody buy MouthShut already

pranav — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 04:19:14 +0000

If there’s one Indian site that has been executing exceptionally well since the Web 1.0 days, its undoubtedly MouthShut.com. Since inception, they’ve constantly innovated and evolved and over time, have amassed a huge,huge number of user generated reviews. Not to mention the strong community that has developed on the site. Never mind if they dont get as many blog mentions as some of the more newer startups.

So, why should someone buy MouthShut ?

As per a recent survey by Nielsen, 73% of Internet accessing Indians trust online user reviews over other means of advertising. That is more than advertising on TV, radio, magazines and search engine / online banner ads. Considering that MouthShut is the main (and probably only) consumer reviews site for the Indian subcontinent, you can only imagine how much influence it yields on the average, online, Indian user.

So, who should buy MouthShut ?

Amongst the international players, I’d say Yahoo, MSN, eBay and AOL. Yahoo has always been a proponent of community building, but considering the recent turmoil surrounding Yahoo, I’d say they have other things on their mind. MSN and AOL are both laggards when it comes to their Indian presence. Buying MouthShut would give them a good boost in terms of traffic, community and a decent competitive edge over Google and Yahoo. Of course, buying MouthShut would make the most sense for eBay, since MouthShut strategically fits very well into Shopping.com, the reviews site owned by eBay.

Amongst the home grown portals, I’d say HT Media should seriously consider it - they’ve been lagging the other Indian portals as far as their online strategy goes. Since they’re playing catch up, they might as well consider growing inorganically.

I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Comments

February 29, 2008, gautam commented: I'm bit surprised by your mention of HT. Why not Indiatimes or Rediff or even NDTV ? HT's recent purchase of Desimartini.com has created enough stir. I'm sure HT is not the right candidate to buy mothshut.
February 29, 2008, Rajesh commented: I feel that most of the reviews at mouthshut are of negative quality as many try to vent their anger there when they receive a bad service from any of the products or service sector, this is clearly evident there.
February 29, 2008, pranav commented: @gautam, the desimartini deal is not the reason why i suggested ht media. Rediff is already, probably the leader in the Indian portals. They've had a strong online presence for some time now (btw, have you read user comments on any rediff story) ..Ditto for Indiatimes....If any of these portal goes for MouthShut, it would bolster their online presence even more. Since HT is playing catch up, they need that extra boost -- and hence i mentioned ht. But you're right about NDTV. I unintentionally left them out - my bad.
February 29, 2008, pranav commented: @rajesh, negative or positive - it doesnt matter - they have a gold mine in terms of the number of user submitted reviews. besides, most of the times, a consumer feels a strong urge to review a company / product only when they've had a -ve experience -- think abt it. every time your cell phone works exceedingly well, you dont go write a +ve review about it. thats just human nature.
February 29, 2008, Jai commented: Whatever u guys r talking about. There is a new site, www.kyayaar.com, posting real reviews by real people, catching up indian market now a days. The name is good. People handling this site do have nice experience. so will get in market. Because of its name, people do come on site, and write reviews here. thats just human nature.
March 1, 2008, Santosh commented: Pranav, The number 1 reason why Indian Media companies aren't shopping for web businesses is that the potential value add is still unclear. A quick question - do you think Pehredar (IndiaTV) has greater awareness than Mouthshut? Don't get me wrong, I really like the team behind Mouthshut and am an Internet Startup guy myself. I'm praying like everyone else that croudsourcing becomes a reality with greater Internet Penetration. I am also an optimist :-). - Santosh
March 3, 2008, pranav commented: Santosh, If thats the case, then I'd say they've got to wake up to the possibility. Before long, a new entrant will come in and force them to reconsider their web strategy - and may the value add will become much clear to them at that time. If only, it isnt too late by then.
March 5, 2008, Ramesh commented: I don't think Rediff can be called the leader in Indian portals. They only have Rediff.com, which is a popular news site. All their other ventures (Rediff Bol, Shopping, Jobs, Matrimonial etc) have been damp squibs. Even with Rediff.com, they were never able to innovate in terms of design, usability or adapting web 2.0 features. Let's not comment about the standards of reporting and their infamous comments columns!
March 5, 2008, pranav commented: @ramesh, the point of the post wasnt to highlight who is the leader in Indian portals.
March 7, 2008, rai ravi commented: i will be hurt if mouthshut.com is bought by a bigger player since i use mouthshut and i want it to remain indepnednet. mouthshut will be killed by google/yahoo/msn if its bought. but i agree mouthshut has great influence in india/ atleast on me lol
March 8, 2008, Raman commented: I share your opinion of MouthShut. It is to be lauded for consistently delivering a high-end Indian presence - something few have succeeded. I suspect the big American players are still too buys ironing out their issues here. But Mouthshut's time will come. I think whowever buys it will be well-served.
March 11, 2008, pranav commented: @rai ravi @raman -- it would indeed be a crown jewel to anyone's portfolio.
May 14, 2008, e.ling commented: mouthshut is very slow. can improve its speed. i use bsnl braodband 500 per month plan.
July 29, 2008, Mohit commented: This is a proxy blog posted by mouthshut as they are desperately seeking a buyer but I don't think there is any taker for mouthshut as they have only but a bad reputation. They have a review factory and 50% of their reviews are fakes, they publish fake traffic figures, do click fraud for their advertisers, already Maruti left them as they caught mouthshut red handed doing click fraud (read the news in alootechie.net), they also delete genuine reviews and issue threats to genuine consumers. They are like mumbai mafias and that's why after 8 long years they are not getting an investor who is interested. Because most of the figures published about mouthshut are fake!
July 30, 2008, Double Haji Baba commented: Your guys are all losers who are criticizing MS, MS rocks and will continue to rock because it pioneered the user generated content when no one knew about it. Check you the Alexa rank of mouthshut and I am sure you will stop blabbering, actually Faisal need not even care to respond to you crooks, he is far away from your reach guys, I don't want to take names but check out your Alexa rank man before commenting on Mouthshut.
September 3, 2008, abhishek yadav commented: mohit ...you may be right , by calling the mouthshut team as fraud... coz i was just looking at their alexa ranking ( 2969 )... God... how did they manage it??? surprising ly they have 5% viewers from America....and 2% viewers from Pakistan....( GOD.. what are americans and pakistani doing with reviews of indian products....) I think it is these kinds of startups who have tarnished the image of internet startups....God help us!!!!!!!!!!

Cleartrip gets $18.5 million third round funding

pranav — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 23:24:47 +0000

Cleartrip has raised an additional $ 18.5 million in a third round of funding led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson. DFJ provided $ 10 million in the round while the rest came from the Mahindra Group and the earlier investors.

This brings the total investment in Cleartrip to $ 30. 2 million.

via release

Comments

March 1, 2008, Priyank commented: Hi Pranav, Its a pleasure to write to you. I don't know if you are part of Cleartrip, but i would surely like to understand the pattern of deployment of the money that has been raised by Cleartrip. Just a brief about me, I am working as an Investment Manager with a venture capital fund which is focused towards investing in socially beneficial small and micro enterprises. Thanks for your consideration...
March 7, 2008, ram commented: Hi Priyank, there are many such portals in India. Can you please share your contact details / email ID ?
July 28, 2008, yatra commented: there are many such portals in India...? Can I get to know such portals..?

Microsoft launches digital advertising platform in India

pranav — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:05:13 +0000

Microsoft has launched its digital advertising platform in India. India is the only country outside of US, where the company has launched the service.

As per Rajnish, India head, MS Digital Advertising Solutions, “The total advertising market in India is of $5 billion. But the online advertising market is still minuscule. We find there is enough scope (for growth).We expect the online advertising market to capture two to three per cent of the total advertising market in as many years.”

BollywoodHungama, Equity Master, HDFC Securities and Facebook have been roped in for the launch. NDTV Media is the exclusive sales partner for Microsoft. ~~I’m not sure if outsourcing the ad sales to an outside entity is such a good idea. A similar attempt by Sify last year, already flopped.~~ (Update: I missed out that the MSN-NDTV relationship has been in place for some time now).

As per NDTV Media COO, Niraj Dutt, they plan to have 750 advertisers on the platform by end of the calendar year.

Hmm..Rediff could rope in only 230 advertisers in the last quarter - do you think 750 is an achievable target till the rest of the year ?

via ET

Comments

February 21, 2008, Nikhil commented: The NDTV Media-MSN partnership is a fairly old one.
February 21, 2008, pranav commented: Nikhil - thanks for pointing that out. corrections done.

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