Group buying website Deals and You has raised $17 million from a group of investors, led by Mayfield Fund and Norwest Venture Partners – with participation from Nokia Growth Partners and Intel Capital - according to report from the Business Standard.

The report further states that the 14-month old company has apparently divested around 18 percent to 20 percent to investors and is currently being valued at US$85 million.

Deals And You will be using this latest infusion of capital to invest in technology, infrastructure, hiring talent, and branding. The company is also apparently revamping its website, aiming to deliver an improved user interface to its customers.

Elaborating on the new funding round, Gaurav Kachru, CEO, Deals And You, said:

We are very happy and encouraged by the faith our investors have shown in us. The raised capital will help us continue to build a strong customer focused business with greater investments in technology and infrastructure, which will help better serve our customers.

Known as Wanamo.com in its previous incarnation, this daily deals website was acquired in June 2010 by Group Buying Global A.G. and Harish Behl of Smile Interactive Technologies Group. Two months down the lane, the website was rebranded and launched as Deals And You, raising $1.5 million in funding from Group Buying Global A.G.

The company currently serves daily local deals in 20 cities and national deals ranging across product, travel, and retail in 250 cities in India.

We know already that Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is entering the Indian market pretty soon. But the approach the online retail giant is taking to enter this market is both different and intriguing.

According to Medianama, Amazon is joining hands with various homegrown e-commerce portals to launch an open platform-style marketplace in India. This marketplace will reportedly showcase products from its e-commerce partners with Amazon taking care of the payment system. The online retail giant is expected to take 2 to 7 percent commission on sales, with the exception of clothing where it is expected be much higher.

One of the e-commerce portals which is tying up with Amazon told Medianama on condition of anonymity that the retailers on the platform will have to provide Amazon with an XML-based product list, customized to the latter’s categorization – and they (retailers) will be responsible for delivery.

Further, each of these retailers will be reviewed and rated by consumers based on their experience. Added to that, Amazon will also be managing the website front-end and is reportedly in talks with a logistics company to buy them out.

While there is no information on which e-commerce companies are partnering with the Seattle-based retail giant, the Times Of India had previously reported that the company is in talks with Flipkart, LetsBuy, and Exclusively.in among others.

Why this approach?

If you are wondering why other e-commerce companies are flocking to join Amazon’s Indian marketplace rather than staying independent and fighting the competition? It’s quite simple. Amazon’s consumer traffic from India is already higher than these homegrown e-commerce ventures, despite zero sales presence in the country, as noted by Medianama.

Also, note that Alibaba’s Tmall has a similar approach in China, where smaller rivals are flocking to its open B2C platform.

According to R. Sriram, ex-CEO of Crossword Bookstores and co-founder of consulting firm Next Practice Retail, Amazon’s customer traffic from India is already four times that of the top online Indian retailer. Hence, e-commerce ventures are jumping on board to gain an additional revenue channel.

Any guesses on who Amazon India’s launch partners will be? Let us know in comments below!

Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that manages the global, crowd-sourced online encyclopedia Wikipedia, has set up its first office outside the US, in India.

This office will be based in New Delhi and called Wikimedia Foundation India Initiatives. Its aim is to improve Wikimedia’s operations in Hindi and 20 other Indian languages.

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales said:

Our vision is for people to have an encyclopedia in their own language, not their second language.

Elaborating on the tremendous growth Wikipedia is experiencing, Jimmy Wales said that the site traffic has increased “pretty dramatically” to 420 million visitors every month, from 340 million two years ago.

After the India launch, the organization is also considering expanding to the Middle East and North Africa regions to attract Arabic communities present there.

That aside, Wikimedia is also seeking global partners to drive awareness about Wikipedia across phones, irrespective of whether it is a high-end smartphone or a low-end feature phone, through bookmarks, decks, marketing messages, and portals. Additionally, it is planning to launch a lightweight, text-only version of the site, called ‘Wikipedia Zero‘, which will allow users to access the site without incurring any data charges.

Amit Kapoor, Senior Manager, Mobile Partnerships at Wikimedia, said that the organization is currently enlisting partners, including both mobile operators and handset manufacturers, for Wikipedia Zero and the service will be launched in India and East Asia in Q4 2011. This will be followed by launches in the Middle East and Africa in Q1 2012, and Latin America in Q2 2012.

We assume more details about these initiatives will be announced at the upcoming WikiConference to be held in Mumbai on November 18.

[Source - Bloomberg]

International premier news portal BBC.com has launched three new dedicated editions of its website for India, Asia, and Australia/New Zealand respectively.

These new editions will reportedly offer an “immersive and localized” BBC.com experience for its audience. It will provide in-depth analysis and breaking news coverage that will appeal to the audience’s needs and interests.

To aid with this coverage, BBC.com has built a new Asia-Pacific team based in Singapore who will be working alongside other journalists from the BBC’s international news service. Chris Davies, acting managing director, for BBC.com explained:

At present BBC.com is the leading international news website in Asia-Pacific with 11.1 million unique users per month. These editions are the response to overwhelming audience feedback and testing and will ensure even greater engagement from new and existing users.

Taking advantage of Geo-IP recognition technology, the homepage of these editions are supposedly designed to show the most localized version for each visitor. So you can expect to see local news, sport and travel sections, weather updates, features from local correspondents, and lots of video content once you load the homepage.

BBC India (Weather)

That said, I am not quite sure if the technology is already in place, since I got a generic homepage at the time of writing this article. The only localization I saw was the TV schedules for BBC Entertainment in India, along with weather information for Mumbai city, whereas I live in Bangalore. (Note: It does offers an option to edit the location, but that’s not the point!)

Apart from regular programming, BBC has also unveiled five specially commissioned reports, commencing from tomorrow. These will offer topics beyond the major headlines, including:

• Start-Up Stories China – An eight-part weekly series investigating how entrepreneurs in China are transforming the country and the world, starting on November 4. It’s both online and on BBC World News.
• Generation Asia – An eight-part series starting on November 4. The series explores the huge changes sweeping across the continent and the impact on a new generation of Asians.
• India Direct – A series of reports starting on November 7 which will run in tandem with the India Direct season of programming on BBC World News.
• China’s Global Reach – In line with the G20 summit, this series of eight reports will complement the Global Economy section of the News website, focusing on the key role China is now playing, and will continue to play, in the global economy.
• The New Middle Class – Two additional reports from the BBC series looking at financial decisions facing a new generation of middle class Asians, this time focusing on India. The reports will air in the week commencing November 21 and November 28.

What do you think about these new localized editions of BBC.com? Do share your views below.

[Source - IndiaInfoline.com]

Google India (NASDAQ:GOOG) today announced a new initiative called ‘India Get Your Business Online’ which will enable India’s small and medium businesses (SMBs) to create an online presence.

Speaking at the launch event, Rajan Anandan, the managing director of Google India said that the nation is currently home to eight million businesses with five employees or less. However, only 400,000 businesses have a website and just 100,000 businesses have a high quality website.

Through this initiative, Google hopes to help 500,000 small/medium businesses gain a digital presence over the next three years. It has partnered with HostGator for this initiative, which will be offering free hosting and technical support for these businesses. Other prominent partners include ICICI Bank, and Federation of Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (FISME).

Rajan Anandan said that this initiative has received a phenomenal response across the world, especially in western countries. India will be the 18th country where such initiative has been rolled out.

What is Google India offering?

Google will provide a customized .in domain along with free tools, training, and resources to build a high quality website. This will be bundled with a Google Apps account, although its not yet clear whether it is a Standard edition or Premier edition.

HostGator will provide web hosting along with free support in managing the website for one year through its toll-free call centers 1800-266-3000.

There’s also a free Rs. 2500 coupon (about $56) for advertising from Google AdWords to help promote your site along with free tips and tools from the Getting Indian Business Online team.

Featuring an impressive, clean design on its homepage, the website is divided into four different sections: Recent, Popular, Photos, and My Profile.

While the Recent section allows you to browse through all the current panoramas that are being uploaded onto the website, the Popular section allows you to browse through only popular panoramas, based on comments and favorites.

The Photos section displays all non-panoramic photos in a magazine-like layout, and My Profile shows all your uploads along with notifications on favorites and comments that you may have received.

Upon clicking on any of the photos, you will be taken a customized photo viewer where you can view it in full glory. The viewer also provides you an option to zoom in or zoom out of the photo, enter full screen mode, favorite any photo, or share it on Facebook or Twitter.

Elaborating on the new 3D photo viewer, Vineet Devaiah, the CEO of TeliportMe, said that they have been heavily working on improving it and the viewer can now effortlessly render any large image within a matter of few seconds.

He further added that TeliportMe is currently the only company which has the ability to display both panoramas and photos in a single viewer.

In addition to the gorgeous new website, the company has also rolled out few improvements to its Android app based on user feedback. The app now features:

• Portrait mode capture, resulting in high definition panoramas.
• Additional capture modes, allowing users to choose a faster capture mode with a slight quality loss in the picture.
• Improved photo-taking abilities.

Vineet announced that the app has doubled its userbase to around 100,000 users in the last two months. They have also tied up with Samsung to preload 360 app on the latter’s future Android devices. He also hinted at prospective partnerships with other companies but refused to divulge any specific information.

The new website can be accessed at TeliportMe.com. You can download the new 360 panorama app for free, through the Android Market.

U.S. private equity firms Carlyle Group and General Atlantic are reportedly planning to invest $150 to $200 million in the Indian e-commerce portal Flipkart, this according to a Reuters report.

This will be the fourth round of investment raised by the Bangalore-based e-commerce company, after the first round of $1 million in 2009; $10 million in June 2010; and $20 million in June 2011.

While rumours of a $150 million funding round have been doing the rounds from July 2011, Reuters reports that this round was apparently delayed due to valuation differences between Flipkart and its investors.

It further added that both Carlyle and General Atlantic are expected to pick up a minority stake in Flipkart after their investment.

Flipkart currently has 2500 employees on board and five warehouses in Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, and Kolkata. It generated $11 million in sales last year and is hoping to have $100 million to $120 million by March 2012 and $1 billion by 2015.

Earlier this month, it also acquired Mumbai-based online media platform Mime360 to enter the digital distribution space and launch an iTunes-like, DRM-free digital music store by the end of this year. This will be followed by e-books and games distribution in early 2012, completing its digital distribution rollout by the end of 2012.

With increasing the adoption of mobile phones in India, consuming content has never been easier — from reading an article on your favourite website/blog or watching video news on the go.

To leverage this massive mobile adoption, Chennai-based e-learning company, Edserv has announced that it has tied up with an Indian telecom operator Tata Docomo to offer its educational content on mobile phones.

Available to all Tata Docomo subscribers across India, this service will be called ‘Tutor on Mobile’ (TOM). It will offer test preparation content for IIT JEE and AIEEE exam preparation. Content will come in the form of videos, text, images, live interactions, and podcasts.

Elaborating on the new mobile offerings, S. Giridharan, Chairman and CEO of EdServ, said:

We believe moving our educational content on the mobile will help students learn on the move, making it truly anytime anywhere learning. With an attractive pricing package, we are confident that the IIT JEE and AIEEE aspirants will find the Tutor on Mobile service a valuable tool in their preparation for the examination.

Enabling the Service

If you are a Tata Docomo subscriber, you can subscribe to Tutor on Mobile (TOM) by sending a text message with keyword ‘TOM’ to 5333300 (toll-free).

The service will be cost Rs 30 (60¢) per month and each video will be priced between Rs 5 (10¢) and Rs 10 (20¢). But as an introductory offer, Tata Docomo has waived the subscription charges for the first month.

[via Zee News|Image Credit]

Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan has joined hands with India’s e-commerce giant Homeshop18, to retail Ra.One’s original movie merchandise through its web portal, www.homeshop18.com and its 24 hours home shopping television channel.

The actor claims that this deal will enable audiences from across the country to buy the movie’s official merchandise with free home delivery and cash on delivery on a smarter and convenient shopping platform. He said:

It gives me immense pleasure to collaborate with HomeShop18 as the association would help us reach out to the masses with our super-movie. Through this association, we are trying a new form of movie marketing in India, much like the practice in Hollywood. We want our audiences to not only get entertained by Ra.One but also get a chance to own a piece of the movie as they shop in the comfort of their homes.

Movie fans will be able to buy a range of merchandise including Ra.One action figures, G balls, Ra.One frisbees, pencil boxes, lunch boxes, stationary sets, notebooks, sipper sets, exam boards, coin banks, toy laptops, fridge magnets, wristbands, key chains, car danglers and so on.

Shailja Gupta, head of digital and licensing and merchandising, Homeshop18 said:

Ra.One is a special movie. With the release of Ra.One we are bringing a new trend, quality and reach of movie merchandising and marketing in India. We are happy to partner with HomeShop18 and leverage their pan-India network and quality processes to delight movie fans.

However it must be noted that, this store will be different from the original online store or the Seventymm store that was set-up to sell movie merchandise.

Over-The-Top Promotion?

However, this is India’s most expensive film to date with a movie budget of Rs 150 crores ($30 million), including a marketing budget of Rs 52 crore ($10.38 million). Hence, I assume it becomes quite necessary to carry out a marketing blitzkrieg like this. If nothing else, it could set a precedent on how a movie should be successfully marketed.

Bharti Enterprises, one of India’s leading business conglomerates, and SoftBank (TYO:9984), Japan’s leading Internet company have just announced a 50:50 controlled joint venture called “Bharti Softbank Holdings Pte. Ltd” which will focus on the mobile Internet space in India.

According to the announcement, this joint venture will primarily focus on three key areas of India’s mobile Internet ecosystem - social media, gaming and e-commerce. It will also aid the growth of various services in this ecosystem, which already boasts of 858 million mobile subscribers as of July 2011, according to the latest stats from Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

Expressing delight at this partnership, Mr. Kavin Bharti Mittal, Bharti SoftBank’s head of strategy and new product development said:

India, which has emerged as the second largest mobile market in the world, stands at the cusp of another revolution – mobile internet.

With a fast growing economy, a large youth population and access to cheaper and faster data, there is a unique opportunity to build services ground up for mobile, especially in a country where the first screen for most is a mobile device. We are delighted to partner with SoftBank, whose vast experience in this area will help us build and invest in services for India.

Atsushi Taira, the CEO at Bharti SoftBank Holdings Pte. Ltd who was previously an SVP, strategic business development at Softbank Corp said:

Over the decades, SoftBank has endeavoured to develop new markets for Internet businesses, starting from the U.S., China and now India.

I believe that through the mobile internet, we can change people’s lives in India and empower each one of them to contribute to society’s exponential growth. I am very excited to be a part of this vision and delighted to have Bharti, with its unparalleled vision, knowledge and experience with emerging markets, as our partner. This partnership represents a significant step in SoftBank’s journey towards becoming No.1 in the mobile internet industry.

[Image Credit: p22311919 on Flickr]

Indian group buying website, mydala.com has announced that it has crossed five million registered users this week, since its inception in November 2009.

This follows the company’s earlier announcement of 3 million users in July 2011, which effectively means that the start-up has recorded two million new users in the last three months.

To commemorate this occasion, Mydala has launched a new mobile WAP portal, at m.mydala.com, in a bid to reach out to all feature phone users, presumably in tier two and tier three cities.

Explaining the need for a WAP portal, Anisha Singh, founder and CEO of mydala.com said:

Mobile is the future growth story for India, with over 858 million wireless connections, out of which 46 percent of the mobile subscribers being capable of accessing wireless Internet, and Indian consumers are becoming more receptive to accessing discount deals on their mobile phones.

Using mydala’s new mobile WAP site, users can now buy their preferred deals not only with a smartphone, but also with any basic feature phone that has Internet connectivity. The best part is that you don’t need to download any app to be able to take advantage of our deep discounts.

Giving an overview of this new WAP portal, co-founder and CTO Ashish Bhatnagar stated that it makes use of the advantages present in the WAP2.0 protocol to offer a zippy, secure, and extra simplified shopping experience to users. This portal features an integrated payment option, similar to its BlackBerry app, through which users can make payments through various payment modes like credit card, debit card, OxiCash, voice payment, or cash on delivery.

He also announced that mydala will feature special WAP-exclusive offers, in order to promote the usage of this WAP portal.

Dubbed the first group buying site in India, the company recently raised a second funding round of $3.6 million from Info Edge (India), following its initial round of $1.8 million and seed input of $250,000 from the founders of CX Partners.

The company currently offers a BlackBerry app and there were reports of an iOS and Android app in the works. However, there seems to be no sign of either of the apps, two months down the line.

Tata Teleservices Limited (BOM:532371) has announced that it will be unifying all its CDMA, GSM, and Photon consumers under the Tata Docomo brand, thereby killing its Tata Indicom brand.

Explaining the company’s new business approach to The Economic Times, Tata Teleservices regional head (South), Yatish Mehrotra said:

Our new business approach gives TTL new strategic direction in the ‘access, content and solutions’ spaces, enabling the company to offer compelling propositions to customers in a market that has been witnessing far-reaching changes in terms of usage trends and customer preferences.

Tata Teleservices stated that it will start migrating all the existing Tata Indicom customers, except those in the Delhi-NCR region, into Tata Docomo from tomorrow. Delhi-NCR users will be migrated to the Tata Docomo network at a later date.

The company also noted that this announcement will mark the entry of Tata Docomo into the CDMA business in India, where it is making significant investments to upgrade its network, in order to widen its existing footprint.

Born out of a joint venture between Tata Teleservices and the Japanese telecom giant NTT Docomo in November 2008, Tata Docomo started its operations in Tamil Nadu in November 2009. It currently operates in 18 of 22 telecom circles in India and is the fifth largest operator in the country, according to the recent TRAI numbers.

It was credited for disrupting the Indian telecom scene, by being the first telecom operator to introduce per second billing, which led to other telecom operators like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea following suit.

It was also the first private telecom operator to start 3G services in India in November 2010, after securing licenses in 9 of 22 circles for Rs 5864.29 crores ($1.19 billion). As of September 2011 (PDF), it had 88.3 million wireless subscribers (GSM+CDMA) and 1.33 million landline subscribers (see chart below).

On a side note, Tata Docomo enjoys a pretty active social media presence, with its Facebook page being one of the top three pages from India with 4 million fans, according to SocialBakers, and is the fastest growing Facebook page in India.

It was also the first major brand to use Twitter’s own advertising service to run ads on the popular microblogging platform.

[Source: Economic Times, Data from TRAI]

eTree Marketing Pvt Ltd is a Haryana-based company which operates one of the popular Indian e-commerce portal, Letsbuy.com. The company is reportedly expected to raise over Rs 195 crore (US$40 million), with a valuation of up to Rs 980 crores ($200 million).

Techcircle.in reports that it is in advanced talks with a group of three investors including Sequoia Capital and Matrix Partners, and the deal is expected to be concluded in 20 days.

This was further confirmed by Hitesh Dhingra, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Letsbuy.com, who said to TechCircle that talks are in advanced stages to raise money; but he declined to confirm the deal or the investors.

This follows Letsbuy.com’s initial funding round in January this year, where it raised $6 million (Rs 29.5 crores approx) from venture capitalists like Helion Venture Partners, Accel Partners, and Tiger Global. Previously, the company had also reportedly raised an undisclosed sum from angel investors in May 2010.

This funding further backs up the notion that the Indian e-commerce space is currently experiencing crazy growth and, from our point of view, is an intriguing space to watch at this point in time.

Online retail juggernaut Amazon is entering the Indian market next year and other e-commerce companies like Infibeam, Flipkart, Snapdeal, and Mydala are either raising massive rounds of capital with high valuations or acquiring companies to enter into new territories.

Experts suggest that this growth will be driven further due to the increasing Internet penetration across the country and the increasing availability of broadband services. Some say that the online retail industry in India will be worth Rs 7,000 crore ($1.5 billion) by 2015.

SlingBox PRO HD

Sling Media, maker of the television streaming media device Slingbox, has announced that it has teamed with prominent Indian e-commerce portals like eBay India, Rediff.com, and Infibeam, to allow consumers to purchase Slingbox online in India.

While Slingbox has been available in physical electronic retail chains like Croma and Reliance Digital for quite sometime now, this announcement marks the online entry of this device into India.

It will be available in two different variants, namely Slingbox SB 120, and Slingbox PRO-HD. While Slingbox SB 120 will be available for Rs 7,999 ($162.5), Slingbox PRO-HD will start retailing for for Rs 14,999 ($305).

Along with this, the company also announced the availability of Slingbox accessories like Slingbox TURBO, which is a plug-and-play device, which connects your Slingbox to your router if they are in different rooms of your house. SlingBox TURBO will be available for purchase at Rs 4,999 ($100).

For those who are not familiar with Slingbox, it is a television streaming device which allows you to watch and control a live TV source through your computer, tablet, or mobile phone from anywhere in the world, provided you have a working broadband Internet connection. This TV source can either be your cable box, satellite receiver, digital video recorder (DVR), or your video camera.

Speaking at the launch, Raman Venkatachar, general manager and head of operations, Sling Media said:

I see great potential in online shopping as it gives the customer the freedom to shop at ease and choose from a wide range of products, all under one roof. We at Sling are extremely happy to be associated with eBay India, Rediff.com and Infibeam.com and believe this association will help us see online traction in terms of accessibility of our products to our  customers, especially with the festive season around the corner, where gifting is a prominent trend.

Will It Gain Traction?

I’m a little sceptical about the traction this device may get, considering how bad the Internet speeds in India are. We think this device will appeal to only high-end consumers who possess fancy portable gadgets and a high speed Internet connection.

While the Internet scene is slowly improving in India, there is another factor that might hinder the usage of these devices. That is the frustrating Fair Usage policy from Indian broadband service providers, which caps the Internet speed of consumers after a certain amount of data transfer, which varies per service provider.

While I haven’t tried Slingbox myself, consumers are bound to get capped within a week or two every month, with such heavy video usage as purported by the device. After the cap is in place, the speeds will sadly drop down to such a point where this device will be become practically unusable.

Paypal has announced that Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has now allowed the company to increase the receiving limit to $3000 per transaction, effective immediately.

This appears to be a significant improvement from the earlier limit of $500 per transaction limit, which was placed in March 2011 to comply with RBI’s strict guidelines.

It also comes as a welcome move to Indian entrepreneurs and individual business entities relying on Paypal to outsource their goods and services outside India.

Indians have been facing severe difficulties ever since the eBay-owned electronic payment juggernaut started facing major legal issues in India, leading to suspension of personal payments in February last year, followed by a $500 per-transaction limit.

Paypal however reiterated that users will have to still follow the earlier guidelines set by RBI. These include adding a Permanent Account Number (PAN) and Purpose Code to receive export-related payments, as well as adding an India-based bank account to facilitate transfers and auto withdrawals of your Paypal balance from your account.

We hope the company will work out all its issues with RBI in the future, thereby enabling smooth functioning of one of the world’s largest online payment systems, in India.

[via Medianama and @preshit on Twitter]

Flipkart, currently one of the largest e-commerce portals in India, has entered the digital distribution space by acquiring a Mumbai-based digital media distribution platform Mime360.

Mime360 distributes digital content like music, movies, and games through its media distribution platform and offers a HTTP-based encryption technology, thereby enabling a fast and secure data delivery. Some of its partners include labels like Saregama, Universal, and music streaming portals like Gaana.com, mYusic, and iMusti.com.

While the financial terms of this acquisition were not disclosed, Flipkart’s co-founder Binny Bansal said that it has acquired both the platform and the team, and the plan is to keep the platform open for all Mime360 customers.

Talking to Medianama about this acquisition, he said:

We’ve acquired them for the team, because they’re strong in both business and technology. That is coupled with their strong domain knowledge, because they’ve been been at it for the last two years. They have strong relationships (in the music business). The digital distribution platform that they’ve built helps us with the time to market.

The Mime360 team will shift to Flipkart’s Bangalore office and Sameer Nigam, CEO of Mime360 will head the latter’s digital distribution business.

Flipkart will use Mime360′s expertise and roll out a DRM-free digital music vertical followed by e-books and games distribution, in possibly an iTunes-like delivery model. While Binny Bansal declined to share any specific timeline for the launch, he said they are already in talks with the labels and potential partners. He also hoped that they complete their digital distribution rollout by end of next year.

This is the second acquisition by Flipkart in last 12 months, following its purchase of the social book discovery platform, WeRead in December 2010.

Our Take

This is a pretty significant move from Flipkart, and if they are able to pull it off, they could be a pretty huge player in this space. Also, Amazon could face a very formidable challenger in the digital content space, when they enter Indian markets early next year.

Letting my imaginations run wild for a moment, I wouldn’t be surprised if Flipkart launches low-cost self-branded tablets and other gadgets as well, which could act as a front-end to its online store and digital services in the future ala Amazon’s Kindle Fire.

[Source: Medianama]

Exclusively.in, the Gilt-like private sale site which debuted in June 2010, seems to have ditched its members-only avatar to adopt a regular e-commerce approach.

The company said this approach will now allow a broader audience to shop from its range of authentic Indian apparel and high-end merchandise like jewellery and accessories. It will also allow the company to have stronger partnerships with a couple of select suppliers and better curate their collections from select brands for each season.

Explaining this shift, Exclusively.in CEO Sunjay Guleria said:

We saw the future of sales shifting on our site from a members-only to an open site due to an overwhelming demand for our products that short-lived flash sales could not meet.

We felt the best way to service that demand was to move away from a consignment model in order to provide fully curated collections with a much broader selection and a full range of sizing to a wider consumer base.

The company currently serves the Indian and fashion communities in the U.S. and U.K. and it plans to expand its reach in the near future to India and other markets such as Canada, Australia, South Africa, and Middle East.

The company had received an initial funding of $2.8 million from Accel Partners and Helion Venture Partners in November 2010. It was followed by $16 million funding, led by Tiger Global management, with participations from its earlier investors, Accel Partners and Helion Venture Partners. It had also recently launched new verticals for luxury travel and weddings respectively.

This move prompts the question of whether a members-only approach, pioneered by Gilt Groupe, is truly feasible in terms of scale, or should you stick with the regular e-commerce model, which is currently exploding in India? Do share your thoughts below.

[Source: PR Newswire]

It is a well known fact by now, that Indian government is seeking access to user data from Internet companies like Google and Skype, citing security concerns.

It had also asked social networks like Facebook and Twitter to provide real-time monitoring of its user data, to ensure that national security wasn’t compromised.

To tackle this problem and help the company work with governments, policy makers, and regulators, Facebook India recently sought to hire a head of public policy. The company had said that the person would work closely with its Privacy and Public Policy global team and represent Facebook at appropriate industry associations.

Well, it looks like Facebook has finally found the right person for the job. It has reportedly hired Ankhi Das as its Head of Public Policy for India, according to Business Standard.

The report further says that Ankhi Das will join Facebook on Oct 17 and will lead the social networking giant’s efforts on privacy, data security, and safety issues in India. In addition, she will also promote Facebook’s role in India’s social and economic growth.

Prior to this role, Ankhi Das was working at Microsoft India as its Director of Public Policy, Legal and Corporate Affairs. She was responsible for handling strategic public policy projects and regulatory affairs for the company.

She also has 15+ years experience of handling public policy and regulatory affairs in the technology sector.

Speaking about this specific role, this could be quite a significant addition for the company, considering how the Indian government is going hammer and tongs at Internet companies with its newly formulated Internet control rules (PDF).

Google had previously rejected these rules, explaining that they could hamper its operations and those of other companies in India, since it will potentially become liable for all the questionable content published by third parties.

It will be interesting to see what stand will Facebook take, considering that it has been completely mum on this topic until today.

In what could possibly be the biggest acquisition in India’s mobile and online gaming scene to date, Walt Disney has acquired India’s leading mobile game developers and publishers, UTV Indiagames for an estimated valuation of Rs 390 -490 crores ($80 – 100 million).

This follows Disney’s move to acquire the Indian media and entertainment conglomerate UTV Software which owns the majority stake (58%) in Indiagames, for $454 million.

Although there is no confirmation from either of the companies and both are refusing to comment on this acquisition, it could effectively mean that Disney will buy out the remaining 42% stake owned by Indiagames CEO Vishal Gondal and other investors such as Cisco Systems, Adobe, and so on.

Founded in 1999, Indiagames is one of India’s earliest and largest mobile and online gaming companies. It has around 300 employees across 4 offices in Mumbai, Beijing, London and Los Angeles. It was later acquired by UTV Group in 2007, in a bid for the latter to enter the gaming segment. As of March 31, 2011, the company had made a profit of Rs 2.47 crores ($500k) with revenues of Rs 54.5 crores ($11.1 million).

Although Indiagames initially dabbled with online gaming and Games on Demand, it later concentrated most of its efforts on mobile gaming with popular titles like ‘Bruce Lee Dragon Warrior’, ‘Cricket T20 Fever’, ‘Quarrel’, and ‘Godzilla Monster Mayhem’. It wasn’t until recently that it experimented with social gaming, by partnering with Facebook to launch social cricket games such as ‘IPL Indiagames T20 Fever‘.

Observing that Bollywood and Cricket is more of a religion than just entertainment in India, it had also bought gaming rights for movies such as ‘Ghajini’,'Dev D’, ‘I Hate Luv Storys’ or the more recent ‘Ra.One‘, and sporting events like Indian Premier League, to launch series of web and mobile games based on it.

With mobile gaming market pegged to be a Rs 1,430 crore ($290.95 million) market by 2014, and the online gaming market expected to grow by 37.8 percent annually in this period, this could turn out to be an impressive move by Disney. Also, it could pave the way for the company to build a stronghold in the digital and mobile gaming segment in developing countries like India.

[Source: AllThingsD via Business Standard]

Image Credit: @rajivmakhni

As anticipated earlier, India’s $35 tablet “Aakash” (not Sakshat as rumoured earlier) was officially launched today by the Minister of Communications and Information technology, Kapil Sibal.

Dubbed the cheapest computing device ever launched, this tablet was apparently manufactured by the Canadian company Datawind in Hyderabad.

Kapil Sibal said that the Indian government will buying 100,000 units on a pilot basis at Rs 2250 ($47) and give it to post-secondary students for a discounted price of Rs 1,750 ($35). The Government intends to sell 10 million units at this price point.

Two months down the line i.e. around late November, it will be commercially available under the ‘Ubislate’ moniker with GPRS and a cellular modem, that will retail at Rs 3,000 ($60).

Regarding the features, there were some obvious hardware compromises made to reach this price point. You can expect a 7″ resistive screen, Android 2.2 “Froyo”, two USB ports, 256MB RAM, 2GB onboard flash memory, 2GB Micro SD card which is expandable up to 32GB and HD video playback capability.

It has a 2100 mAh battery life which will offer a decent three hours on average use and 90 to 120 minutes of HD video playback. Also it will feature the GetJar store instead of the Android marketplace.

Connectivity wise, the version launched today is only Wi-Fi enabled but the commercial version, which will be debuting in two months, will have GPRS support.

[Source - NDTV]

Although Twitter is brilliant as a service, its a well known fact that its search sucks big time. You can’t search for tweets which are a week old and it’s pretty slow as well.

In fact there was a time, when I used to fire up the now-defunct FriendFeed to search for my tweets, since it provided me with better results than Twitter’s own search.

The San Francisco-based company is trying to make amends by rolling out a new version of search recently, but it is still nowhere near most people’s expectations.

Taking things into their own hands, the team at CloudMagic, a Bangalore-based startup, has now added Twitter search to its repertoire.

For those who aren’t familiar with CloudMagic, it offers browser extensions for Firefox and Google Chrome to enable you to search across Google services like Gmail, Google Docs, Contacts, and Calendar along with its Google Apps counterparts. And the best part is that it delivers these results in Google Instant-esque way and you don’t even need an Internet connection to manage all this.

Using this new Twitter search, you can now search tweets, retweets, and direct messages offline.

But the thing that takes the cake is the ability to search your own timeline, which is simply brilliant.  You can also go to preferences and enable combined search which will allow CloudMagic to display results from all the registered accounts, irrespective of whether the account is logged in or not.

Now I wonder why Twitter doesn’t provide this feature natively, but I guess it is too much to expect from the company when the search itself is quite rudimentary.

Similiar to Twitter search, you can also use various search operators, listed below, to get any specific result.

Apart from that, CloudMagic also claims that it has carried out a few optimizations under the hood, which has made its own search up to 100 times faster when compared to its previous release.

You can download the new browser extensions for Windows, Mac, and Linux from CloudMagic website.

Here’s a neat intro video for CloudMagic, narrated in English:

The portal, which is currently in beta, will offer deals in 11 cities including Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi/NCR, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Mumbai, Nagpur, and Pune. The company has also claimed that it has partnered with premium merchants in these cities to offer the best local e-commerce experience.

In addition to the rebranding, the daily deal giant has also announced a new leadership team, following the resignations of SoSasta founders Ananya Babna and Udayan Babna.

The new team will be headed by Ankur Warikoo, who has been appointed as the CEO of Crazeal.com and will be responsible for growing Groupon’s business in India.

Explaining that Crazeal will share the same DNA as its parent company, Groupon Inc, he said:

Having pioneered the online deal industry and emerged as the top player in markets around the world, we are confident that this is the right time for us to provide the discerning Indian consumer with the Crazeal.com experience.

He further added:

We are identifying merchants with high quality offerings, expanding to newer cities and above all enabling Social Commerce to help consumers avail of the best that their city has to offer. We are passionate about bringing quality deals to our consumers, and we feature only those deals that we would ourselves love to buy.

Other prominent members in the team include Bharath Devanathan as the COO and Sachin Kapur as the Head of Marketing.

The company will also sport six sales directors in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Kolkata. These directors will take care of building the Local Service, National Products, and National Travel verticals.

Among the merchants who are already on-board the revamped Crazeal include – Cafe Coffee Day, Domino’s, and Claridges for national deals and Kainoosh, Olivea, Crowne Plaza, and Amoda Spa for local deals.

Will It Fare Better This Time?

Groupon India’s earlier avatar, SoSasta.com had undergone a lot of internal problems and failed to make any significant impact in Indian market, since its entry last year.

It was unfortunately hacked and the entire user database including e-mail addresses and clear-text passwords was leaked online.

Adding to the injury, SoSasta founders Ananya Babna and Udayan Babna resigned from the company, followed by a series of top level management people walking out of the company.

And as if that was not enough, the company also faced a trademark challenge by a Bangalore-based company, ValueNet Ecommerce which owns Groupon.in and has apparently trademarked the brand name Groupon, in India.

While Groupon India initiated a case against the latter in Delhi High Court, the latter has also filed a case against Groupon in Karnataka High Court.

Now that Groupon has rebranded its entire Indian business, it would be interesting to see if it will see any success in this new avatar.

Indian group buying website MyDala.com, has raised second round funding of Rs 18 crores ($3.6 million) from Info Edge (India).

This follows its initial funding of 9 crores ($1.8 million) from Info Edge and Rs 1.1 crores ($250,000) from the founders of CX Partners.

Launched in November 2009, the start-up claims to be the first group-buying site in India and had recently hit the 3 million subscribers milestone.

It had also released a BlackBerry app in August, which enabled users to easily browse through the deals in their area and pay for them using the integrated payment options in the app.

With e-commerce booming in India and group buying sites popping up like mushrooms across the country, we assume this funding will be used to scale up MyDala’s operations and compete with its rivals like Snapdeal, Crazeal (previously Sosasta), and dealsandyou.

[via Medianama]

Is this better? Click to enlarge.

Google yesterday announced the redesign of its UK and Indian editions of Google News, in a effort to unify the experience across its various editions. It claims that these editions offer a richer visual navigation, similar to its US Edition, in order to make the website more browsable. It also allows you to discover trending and popular news with ease, and provides more options to improve the news and sharing experience.

Google News Preferences

The “Personalize” button present at the top right of your screen allows you to add any specific news topic like Astronomy, Cricket, and Parliament (see image right). It also enables you to adjust the frequency of existing topics like business, sports, health, and entertainment or sources like the Times of India, IBNLive.com, or even Penn Olson.

So if you want to see more of our stories, you can add us as a news source in the box provided, if you haven’t already, and increase the frequency by using the ‘+’ symbol next to our name.

Google also noted that it is currently working on rolling out more features like Editors’s Picks and “Standout” content tag, to help publishers highlight their best content on Google News homepage.

Check out the video demo below to get an idea of all the new changes in Google News — India Edition:

Students over 16 who are members of its DreamSpark program are allowed to participate in this program. They will receive a brand new Windows Phone if they develop and publish four apps on the Windows Phone Marketplace by December 18, 2011.

However if you are not able to publish four apps by the stipulated time, don’t worry, you’ll still get a merit certificate, a Windows Phone T-Shirt, and a 2GB Flash Drive.

How To Participate?

1. Head over to Microsoft India Website and register for “i unlock joy”campaign by November 18, 2011.
2. Download the latest Windows Phone Developer Tools from MSDN.com.
3. Once you develop the app, submit it at the AppHub. The app is then certified and listed on the Windows Phone Marketplace.
4. You can then fill out the form with your app details to claim the goodies. The complete terms and conditions can be read here.

So if you are student app developer, here is a great chance to rack your brains and build some really cool apps for Windows Phone 7.

And if you do build any interesting app, do let us know!

[via WP Sauce]

Google India head Rajan Anandan yesterday announced in a press conference that it has joined hands with the Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan to promote its new social network, Google+. He also added that the actor who is often referred to as the “The King of Bollywood,” will be one of the first Indian celebrities to join Google+.

As per the agreement, Shahrukh Khan will participate in live video chats with fans using the Google+ Hangouts feature over the next couple of weeks. In return, the Internet giant will promote Shahrukh’s forthcoming sci-fi movie “Ra.One” through YouTube and Google+.

Mr. Rajan Anandan said:

We are very pleased to associate with Shahrukh Khan to create a unique and customised destination for Ra.One on YouTube. In the last few years, Indian production houses have begun to embrace the YouTube platform to engage fans, distribute movies and leverage rich media ad formats to promote their movies online. Bollywood is now an integral part of the YouTube experience and reaches over 22 million unique users in India. With this channel we want to demonstrate how YouTube can be used creatively to connect with the highly engaged YouTube community in India and across the world.

The movie sports a custom built YouTube channel, which Mr. Anandan claimed to be the first of its kind for a Bollywood movie. It will offer exclusive video content like unseen footage of the star cast, behind the scenes shots, videos of the Ra.One premiere and red carpet events planned in London, and host various contests to engage the fans.

In a similiar fashion, Google+ will also feature numerous social games and a digital comic based on the movie.

Speaking about this agreement, Shahrukh Khan said:

YouTube is an incredibly powerful platform to engage fans across the globe and is integral to all blockbuster movie promotions in Hollywood. For Ra.One, I wanted to leverage the full potential of digital media and create an experience on YouTube and Google+ that has never been done for any Indian film. I am very excited about the project and am personally working with the Google team to create a destination that my fans can enjoy from anywhere in the world.

Will it Work?

Roping in Shahrukh Khan to promote Google+ is definitely a good move to attract the common man but I am little sceptical about whether users will come back to use the service once these promotions die down.

However, Google+ already sports 4 million early adopters from India and the market penetration of Google services in the country is pretty impressive as well.

Hence if the company manages to get more celebrities and brands on board with a localized marketing push like it did with Google Chrome, it might just help Google+ gain the required traction from users. What do you think?

[via Alootechie]

Sachin Pilot, Indian Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology, has launched a new web based Optical Character Recognition (OCR) system for Hindi and Punjabi.

Explaining that this initiative will be a significant move towards the digital inclusion of differently-abled people from various linguistic backgrounds, Sachin Pilot hoped that it will also pave the way for wider usage of Indian languages in governance applications.

For people who aren’t familiar with OCR technology, it is a process through which handwritten, typewritten, or printed text is converted to electronic form. This will allow editing of printed books and documents, searching for any specific word/phrase, and also implementing techniques like machine translation or text-to-speech on it.

Along with the OCR system, Sachin Pilot also launched a text-to-speech system across six languages – Hindi, Marathi, Bangla, Telugu, Tamil, and Malayalam.

This effectively means that developers can now finally integrate this system in their software and users can listen to regional books and documents on any device which supports text-to-speech technology i.e. mobile phones, e-book readers, tablets, computers, and so on. Also, if the device sports a screen reader, users will be able to easily navigate and perform basic operations on it.

Both the systems were developed by Technology Development for Indian Language (TDIL), a program driven by India’s Department of Information Technology.

While the text-to-speech system has already been integrated with OCR-A font and Non Visual Desktop Access (NVDA), a free and open source screen reader for Windows OS, the Optical Character Recognition, is on showcase at TDIL Data Centre.

[Image Credit]

It looks like YouTube Box Office is working pretty well for Google India.

In a blogpost in its official blog, Google India today announced that it will start showing two full-length movies on its Boxoffice YouTube channel every month.

Explaining that the channel has received an overwhelming response since its launch three months back, Google said that Boxoffice has already received over 11.5 million views in India. Also it is the 20th most subscribed channel of all time with 23,069 subscribers at the time of writing.

The company has previously showcased blockbuster movies like Band Baaja Baarat, 3 Idiots, Bheja Fry 2, and is currently airing Shaitan with Pyaar Ka Punchnama making its debut pretty soon. Intel continues to be the main sponsor of this initiative.

One interesting point that’s worth noting, is that most of these movies are making their online debut much before airing on television. This indicates the slow strategy shift of content publishers and movie studios who are uploading blockbuster full length movies and television content onto YouTube and monetizing it under the latter’s partner program.

With YouTube opening up the program to all Indian YouTubers , I anticipate more content publishers will join the digital bandwagon soon, thus paving the way for easy and affordable access to high quality video content.

Credit: Shehjar.com

With Amazon poised to enter the Indian market early next year, home grown e-commerce portals like Infibeam and uRead are reportedly preparing to raise capital to the tune of Rs 245 crores ($51.3 million) by the end of this year, according to a report from Business Standard.

Quoting officials privy to the development, the report stated that while Infibeam plans to raise Rs 180-225 crore ($37-47 million) to enhance its operating capabilities, uRead is hoping to raise Rs 20 crore ($4 million) to expand into other segments.

Explaining the need for funding, Infibeam’s vice-president (planning and strategy), Manu Midha said:

We have not raised any money to date, and now, we are looking to raise money from venture capital. The funds would be used to build operational capabilities. We want to raise at least Rs 100 crore ($21 million). We are open for more funding, but at the right valuation. We have already signed up with a partner to help us raise the money.

As we had noted earlier, investments in the Indian e-commerce space are definitely heating up, with companies like Flipkart, Infibeam, and Snapdeal vying to lead the e-commerce space in the country, before the online retail giant Amazon lands here.

NYTimes had in fact noted, in one of its recent articles, that venture capitalists had poured in Rs 8.7 billion ($183 million) into 20 e-commerce firms in the last year, compared to Rs 2.91 billion ($61 million) for 13 firms in 2009.

A similar report from ASSOCHAM suggests that the online retail industry is expected to be worth Rs 7,000 crore ($1.5 billion) by 2015. This growth will be driven by increasing Internet penetration across the country and easy availability of broadband services.

Keeping this in mind, I think it’s fairly safe to assume that e-commerce in India is still in its nascent stages.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an international community with a core objective of developing web standards, has set up an office in India.

This office was inaugurated by India’s Minister of State for Communications and IT, Sachin Pilot, and it hopes to play an active role in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry.

Explaining the need for a W3C office in India, Sachin Pilot said:

Activities initiated by W3C India office will go a long way in accelerating the growth of web in Indian languages. It will also facilitate information access on World Wide Web regardless of languages, location, ability, generation, age, and income.

Previously, the W3C had stated that one of its goals in 2011 was to increase global participation, with a specific focus towards China and India. Also keeping India’s linguistic diversity in mind, it had announced that implementing W3C standards for a seamless web experience across platforms in the country would be a challenging task.

With this new office, the consortium can now help address local challenges in the global context, as seen with the launch of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) website in 22 Indian languages.

It can also spread awareness about the W3C recommendations among developers, application builders, standardization bodies, and policy makers.

Earlier this week, Chinese search giant Baidu also joined World Wide Web Consortium. It had announced that it would be glad to share its experience with Box Computing and ensure the long-term growth of the Web, by working with the consortium on several core Web standards and critical issues related to China such as multilingual support.

[via IBNLive.com]

India’s leading food and restaurant guide, Zomato has released a public API, enabling app developers to leverage its restaurant database in their local apps. The API was private until today and was available to only select partners such as MapMyIndia, MakeMyTrip, and MyCityWay.

Using this API, developers can now offer all the features that Zomato is known for, be it 18000+ restaurant listings, location co-ordinates, reviews, discounts, photos and menus in their app. The start-up also claimed that this API will always be updated and real-time, since its own products use the same API.

It will also allow developers to search through restaurant listings based on a specific criteria and test out their requests in a API Sandbox provided by the start-up.

Deepinder Goyal, the founder and CEO of Zomato said to Penn-Olson:

We have been receiving content sharing requests from developers for a while and are very excited about releasing the public API. MapmyIndia, MakeMyTrip, MyCityWay, and Mate-on-go have already been using our API for a while and making it public opens up a world of possibilities. We would love to see and encourage developers to create innovative web and mobile applications using our content.

Zomato recently forayed into events in a bid to reposition itself as a premium lifestyle brand. But the company notes that the API is currently limited to its restaurant data. The events data will be added sometime in the near future.

The start-up had recently raised $3 million from Info Edge (India), following the initial round of $1 million, stating that the money will be used to scale its operations, increase the market reach, and enrich the user experience on both its web and mobile products.

This seems to be a new ploy by Google to gain more Indian users who might be unaware of Chrome apps and extensions.

However if you are an avid Google Chrome user, the Chrome Web Store is essentially the same as before, except for the fact that it now includes India-specific apps from developers and publishers like Saavn, ESPN Cricinfo, Midday to get your daily dose of Hindi music, cricket, and entertainment news respectively.

This follows the company’s aggressive marketing campaign. It’s run online through a series of videos, highlighting how the web and its products have changed the lives of millions of people and helped them achieve their dreams; and also run offline through billboards, and TV and newspaper ads, with a focus on the browser’s speed.

The browser currently boasts of a market share of 31.75 percent in India,  just behind Mozilla Firefox which is the market leader in India with 32.97 percent, according to numbers from Statcounter.

Google has today officially announced the launch of YouTube Partner Program in India, after selectively rolling out to a few partners last December.

This partner program was kick-started by YouTube in 2007. It enables regular YouTubers, who create original and popular videos, to offer their viewers a high-end branded experience by providing the ability to completely customize their channel. It also offers its advertising solutions so that producers can monetize their videos in return for a 30 percent cut in the generated ad revenue.

YouTube helps promote these videos and provides various analytical tools, education, and funding opportunities to improve the content of these videos and also protect content copyrights.

While the video giant hasn’t divulged on how many partners it has in India, it said that the program boasts of 20000+ partners across 22 countries. It pays out millions of dollars every year, with thousands of partners earning $1,000 per month and a few earning $100,000 per year.

Explaining why the company chose India for this partnership program, David MacDonald, the head of YouTube Content Operations said:

We chose India as our next Asian destination after Japan for our investments after looking at the vibrancy that this market has in terms of content generation. Another primary reason to come to India is because of the potential growth of advertising market that we have seen in the recent time. With the launch of YouTube Partner Program in India we will create a whole new eco system for economic use taking the Partner Program to the next level.

Following the tremendous success of its Indian Premier League and Bollywood movies streaming service, he said that 60 per cent of its 20 million Indian users prefer local Indian content on the portal.

Further, he explained that YouTube is also planning to start an incubation programme in order to find new partners for this program:

In this incubation programme, we can help them to create content and give them requisite tools. Apart from large media houses which has been driving the video consumption, in recent times, we have also seen an increasing demand for user-generated content or individual content.

This could be a brilliant move by YouTube to tap into the creativity of budding video creators in India and increase its user base significantly.

[via Business Standard]

Google is famous for its amazing doodles, created to celebrate scientific and artistic achievements, festivals, and historic events. The Internet giant has announced the third edition of its Doodle4Google competition, inviting Indian kids to come up with a creative doodle for the upcoming Children’s day on November 14th.

If you are not familiar with Doodle4Google, it’s a yearly contest conducted by Google wherein it invites students across the country, from the age of five to sixteen (i.e. first to tenth grade), to create a theme-based doodle.

Nikhil Rungta, the country marketing head at Google India, explained to Penn-Olson:

Doodle4Google has become a global platform giving young children an opportunity to showcase their talent globally. In India, we have noticed great enthusiasm amongst children toward the Doodle4Google competition. Last year the competition crossed the 100,000 mark from just 4,500 entries in the first year and we expect it to grow much higher this year.

He further added that the winning doodle will be featured as the official logo on Google India’s homepage on November 14 and the logo designer will get a laptop, a year’s Internet connection and a technology grant of Rs 2,00,000 ($4,245) for the school that he/she represents.

How To Participate

1. Apply for registration on the Doodle4Google website.
2. Review and download all the doodle resources offered by Google.
3. Follow the instructions on how to design your doodle.
4. Once you are happy with your efforts, submit your doodle and add a title with a supporting statement for it. Last date for submissions is September 15th.

Key Details

This year’s theme is “India’s gift to the world” and the competition will be held in three categories – 1st to 3rd grade, 4th to 6th grade and 7th to 10th grade.

A month later, a celebrity panel of judges will shortlist the entries to the top 45 doodles, with 15 from each category. These entries will then be thrown open for public voting, allowing users to choose their favorite doodle. The top voted entry in each category will finally be declared as the winner.

Additionally, a national winner will be chosen by Google’s original doodler, Dennis Hwang, which will be showcased on Google India’s homepage on Children’s Day – November 14.

Previous Winners

Wondering what the winning entries from the previous year looked like? Take a look at the doodles below:

Doodle4Google 2010 National Winner

Doodle4Google 2010 Group One Winner

Doodle4Google 2010 Group Two Winner

Doodle4Google 2010 Group Three Winner

After surpassing the milestone of 100 million active users worldwide, the San Francisco based social networking giant Twitter has announced that it will be adding support for five Asian languages including as Hindi, Filipino, Malay, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese in the coming weeks. That will bring the total number of supported languages to 17.

While Twitter didn’t explain exactly what it meant by “adding support,” we assume that it will offer the entire Twitter experience in the languages mentioned above, including the ability to tweet and hopefully view your tweets in these languages. This will be similar to what it currently offers in Japanese, Indonesian, Korean, Dutch, and so on.

Previously, Twitter stated that its translation center has been a resounding success with 200,000+ translators across all languages. It had also launched 100 percent crowd-sourced translations in Indonesian and Dutch in less than a month after its first call for community involvement.

These localized translations are primarily driven by community volunteers who use the tools provided by Twitter’s Translation Center. This was opened up earlier in the year, aiming to offer a localized version of all parts of Twitter’s web interface, support pages, desktop and mobile apps. Twitter works closely with a select group of the most active translators to maintain these localized versions of the service.

As far as Indian languages go, tweeting has been possible over the last couple of years thanks to Google’s Indic transliteration bookmarklets. But Twitter has officially never offered a regional version either on Twitter.com or its mobile apps, which is quite surprising considering the popularity of Twitter among Indians.

However, it must be noted that Twitter had called for volunteers to translate Hindi earlier this month, signalling the arrival of a Hindi version of Twitter.com for those who aren’t comfortable with English.

India’s Competition Commission of India (CCI), which has been constituted to protect the interest of consumers in India and prevent any anti-competitive practice in the market, has ordered a probe on Apple. It states that the Indian subsidiary of the Cupertino-based tech giant is allegedly limiting the availability of its products to a select number of service providers in India.

Explaining the need for a probe, CCI’s Director General said to PTI that they have found prima facie evidence which makes the case “worth investigating further.”

Previously, the commission was asked to probe into Apple India, based on a complaint filed by a customer under section four of the Competition Act, 2002. It asserted that Apple is using its dominant position to curb customer choice by limiting the availability of iPhones and iPads in India to a limited number of service providers, besides its signature stores.

It had further raised objection that iPhones could only be serviced in Apple service centers which were charging high servicing rates, and consumers could only download “software from the i-store” (we assume they mean the App Store).

While I am not an expert in law, there’s something about this complaint which makes me ponder its validity.

In India, iPhones are currently being retailed through telecom operators such as Airtel and Aircel. However these phones are completely unlocked, i.e. the device is not locked to any specific carrier and consumers may choose any network operator after purchasing the phone.

This was the exact reason why Airtel and Aircel launched a reverse subsidy scheme along with the phone, which offered a 100 percent money back opportunity by either discounting the monthly rental on a postpaid account or crediting the user’s prepaid account on a monthly basis with the same amount, over the next two years.

This strategy was created by operators so that it could prevent consumers from jumping onto another network, since India is predominantly a prepaid market (96 percent) with a very high churn rate. So I am not quite sure on what the complainant means by “select number of service providers” in his complaint.

If we come to Apple’s supposed market dominance in India, the company hasn’t disclosed any official sales figures of its iOS devices in India, but it is quite clear that these devices haven’t excited Indian audience as much as the company would have liked. This is partly due to the comparatively high pricing and partly due to late availability — although I should note that Apple is trying to making amends on both fronts lately. I think it is quite safe to say that iOS devices don’t even enjoy a significant market share in India, let alone a dominant one.

Finally, the service center complaint is the strangest of the lot. Apple, like every other electronic company, has designated third party service centers, besides its own Apple centers. So this claim seems baseless to us.

Of course its pretty much common knowledge that if you opt for an unauthorized service center to save couple of bucks, you will run the risk of ruining your phone, let alone voiding the device’s warranty.

[Image Credit: Flickr user Ivan Walsh]

Hot on the heels of adding events to its repertoire, Zomato, one of India’s leading food and restaurant guides, has raised Rs 13.5 crores ($3 million) from Info Edge (India) Ltd.

This follows the initial round of Rs 4.7 crores ($1 million) which was raised in August 2010, to fund its product development, sales and marketing efforts.

Now the start-up – which is trying to reposition itself from its previous Foodiebay.com avatar to a premium lifestyle brand – announced that it has seen an overall strong growth over the past year, doubling its coverage from five to ten cities and increasing the number of restaurants listed from 7,000 to 18,000.

The portal has also launched its mobile apps on all major smartphone platforms including iOS, Android and Symbian and currently enjoys a healthy userbase of 100,000 users and a million monthly visitors.

Explaining that this new capital infusion will be used to scale up Zomato’s operations and drive both its existing and new verticals, Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO of Zomato.com said to Penn-Olson:

We plan to use these funds to further scale our operations, enrich user experience on both our web and mobile products, and increase our reach in the market. We have recently moved into events and an e-commerce section is in the pipeline. The second round of funding will also go into building a strong foundation for these new verticals.

Info Edge Founder and Executive Vice Chairman Sanjeev Bhikhchandani said to Penn-Olson:

Zomato.com is one of India’s fastest growing consumer internet portals. The satisfaction levels on both sides of the value chain (consumer and merchant) are very high – a testimony to the great product made for the consumers and the value seen in it by the merchants. We see immense potential in their current model, in their future plans and the capability of the team to execute it well.

India’s Department of Information Technology has announced that it will be teaming up with National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL) to launch a single payment gateway for its e-governance services by March 2012.

Explaining that this gateway will facilitate collection of license fees and other premium services over the Internet, thereby allowing citizens to skip a tedious trip to the government offices, Department of Information Technology Additional Secretary, Shankar Aggarwal said:

We are done with proof of concept with Maharashtra and are ready with standard guidelines to replicate the whole process throughout the country.

He further explained that this gateway will be linked to around 20 services over the next couple of months, including those offered by State and Central Government and it will be rolled out to 11 states across India by next year.

Although he didn’t divulge information on which 11 of the 28 Indian states will be offering this gateway, he said that the service will be kick-started in Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, and Goa followed by eight other states which are in currently at various levels of discussion with the government.

Regarding the deal with NSDL, Aggarwal said that the government has signed a revenue gap funding agreement with it, according to which NSDL will be paid per transaction, provided that one crore (ten million) successful transactions are carried out every year. If the number falls below one crore (ten million), then the government will compensate the depository based on the commission promised by them.

This move follows the government’s bid to adopt Open Source software for all its e-Governance projects.

(via Economic Times|Image Source)

After having a dream run in India, Snapdeal is apparently looking for expansion in South Asian countries like Singapore, Malaysia and Philippines.

Talking to PTI, Snapdeal’s CEO, Kunal Behl explained:

We want to replicate our success in India in other South Asian countries like Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, markets which are similar to India, where people seek a good deal. We are looking for a partner for these markets.

The group buying portal, which currently serves 50 Indian cities and has an unique distinction of having an Indian village after its name, also anticipates to go international by the end of this fiscal year and surpass Rs 150 crore ($32.65 million) in revenue.

Excited by the amazing growth experienced by the company’s product deals business, Kunal Behl said that it has contributed to about 20 percent of Snapdeal’s total business and they are now considering to bring in apparel and lifestyle products as well. He said:

Earlier our target was Rs 100 crore ($21.76 million), but the way business is growing, we should be able to cross Rs 150 crore ($32.65 million). Our products business is doing phenomenally well and we are looking at bringing in apparel and lifestyle products as well.

The company recently raised $40 million in a series B funding round from Bessemer Venture Partners, Nexus Venture Partners and Indo-US Venture Partners. which is dubbed to be largest single round of private investment in an Internet company in India to date.

Kunal Behl had stated that the funding will allow them to expand the product deals business, strengthen its local and national merchant deals vertical and introduce innovations to enhance consumer and merchant convenience such as group car buying.

[via Economic Times]

One of India’s largest food and restaurant guides, Zomato, has now introduced an “Events” section to reposition itself from the existing food-only brand to a premium lifestyle brand.

For those who don’t know, Zomato, previously known as Foodiebay.com, was launched in July 2008 as an online food and lifestyle guide. It has since expanded its services to 18,000 restaurants in ten cities in the country including Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Chandigarh over a span of three years, with more cities like Kochi in the pipeline. With a million monthly visitors spread across these ten cities, Zomato claims to be the largest food and lifestyle portal in the country.

The events section currently showcases 250+ upcoming events ranging across various categories like arts and literature, music and dance, food and drink, entertainment in a visually rich interface, similar to its restaurant section. You can find out events happening in the city by date, location and timing, category and keyword search.

If you are interested in any event listing, you can further view its details and similar events happening nearby. One of the features which I thought was cool was the ability to view all the restaurants nearby to the event place, which can come in handy, if you go to an event with your friends and want to hang around later for lunch/dinner.

The events homepage also features popular events, recommended events along with a side widget listing the week’s event agenda and a large dark grey button to submit events for inclusion to Zomato events. While the events are currently limited to the Delhi-NCR region, the company told Penn Olson that it will be rolled out to Mumbai and Bangalore shortly.

Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO, Zomato.com said:

It’s been a while since we have been serving our huge customer base by helping them make their eating out and nightlife choices. We have launched our Events section as we realize these are the same customers who would also like our services to help them choose their destinations to hang out and enjoy. Our focus has been user-centric and we are only including events, which makes sense to the end user. For example, if a restaurant is trying to pull off a marketing gimmick by calling a new dish in the menu an event, we have not put it in the section. We will be launching our events sections for Mumbai and Bangalore shortly and I’m confident they will all be very well received like all our offerings have been so far!

On his Twitter account, he also said that Zomato team is building a e-commerce section to the portal right now, although he didn’t divulge any specific details about it. We assume this will serve as an online ticket booking platform for events and possibly even restaurant bookings, after all it had rejected the idea of online ordering, earlier this year, citing several issues with it.

SMS GupShup, India’s Twitter-like SMS service, has raised Rs 50 crores ($10 million) from a series of venture capital investors to reach a valuation of Rs 1000 crores ($218 million). It has also reached the 50 million user milestone.

According to the Economic Times, the four year old mobile social network, which is one of the largest text-based group messaging services in India, raised this capital from existing investors like Lloyd George, New Horizons, Charles River Ventures, Helion Ventures and Globespan Capital Partners, and was led by an US-based venture capital firm Tenaya Capital.

This is the fifth round of funding, taking SMS GupShup’s total funding to $47 million. Previous rounds raised $7.5 million in December 2006, $11 million in October 2008 and $12 million in January 2010.

Launched in April 2007, SMS GupShup – which was spawned from Webaroo, an offline web content storage start-up – reached 45 million users and over two billion SMSs processed per month, as of April 2011. Further, the company was reportedly adding over one million members per month, attributing its rapid growth to the immense popularity of mobile devices in India.

Also, after observing significant traction from advertisers and brands who were looking to connect with Indian consumers, the company launched its enterprise product called BizShup last month. That’s aimed at helping small businesses advertise to millions of its network users at a nominal cost.

Revenue-wise, the company said it grew by over 400 percent in 2010 and expects to touch Rs 100 crore ($21.8 million) by the end of March 2012.

A New Delhi based law firm Singhania & Partners has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft India in Competition Appellate Tribunal (COMPAT) for reportedly abusing its dominant position in the desktop software market for its Windows and Office products.

Further, the firm also claimed that Microsoft is forcing its dealers to sell more expensive Volume Licence costing Rs 9,300 ($202) for larger customers rather than OEM license of Windows Vista, which is available at Rs 6,350 ($138), although both products are quite identical in features. In case the customer wanted to opt for an OEM license, they would have to buy new computers along with it.

That being said, this is the second time Singania & Partners has filed such a lawsuit. It had filed a similar appeal earlier this year, which was rejected by Competition Commission of India (CCI) due to lack of evidence. CCI had later said that it couldn’t find any evidence against the Redmond software giant which indicated that it was driving away its competitors because of its dominant position in the market (see chart).

In its re-appeal, the law firm however has said that they had filed the case due to license overpricing and bundling of software, not because Microsoft was driving away its competitors from the market.

While I am no expert in law, the claims seem quite genuine. However I am not quite sure if this appeal will stand in the court, since Microsoft would have woven special partnerships with manufacturers to preload Windows OS into their computers. They simply can’t offer these special edition operating systems to normal business customers.

[Source: TimesOfIndia.com | Image: Marc_Smith]

SafeAutoRickshaw.com, a new initiative by Viswanath Seetharam and Bangalore City Traffic Police Force, hopes to solve some of the problems between autorickshaw drivers and commuters by making auto rides easier and safer in the city.

The basic premise of this website is quite simple, you register on safeautorickshaw.com by entering your name and email address, choose the beginning and the end point and click “Submit”. The website will then furnish you a detailed list of autorickshaw drivers available in that area along with their phone numbers, using which you can directly book a ride by contacting them.

The website also features a dedicated profile for every driver with their photo, which provides details like registration number, license and home address, which could come in handy, to recover any valuables commuters may forget in the vehicle.

Viswanath Seetharam said these details are initially checked for authenticity and correctness before making it public. In addition, the drivers also undergo a series of tests and are reportedly trained on courtesy.

Launched on 28th Aug 2011, Viswanath said the auto drivers have been very receptive of this initiative and they already have 28 drivers onboard with more than 100 drivers waiting in the pipeline. They also plan to launch a call centre in four months using which a commuter can give his current location and find out the nearest driver available. Viswanath said:

We are planning on recruiting two physically challenged people for this call centre. The commuter can call the centre and give the start and end points. The call centre will be able to connect the commuter to the nearest driver. This will be set up in 3 to 4 months.

This initiative seems quite impressive on paper but it does come with its own doubts regarding the implementation. Firstly, there is no information on whether this service uses Global Positioning system (GPS) in any form. Quite honestly, it would be meaningless to run the service without it, since auto drivers keep plying their vehicles on different routes throughout the day.

Another issue is the willingness of the driver to pick up the passenger and drive to the destination without any fuss. i.e. Will the drivers under this initiative accept all commuters or do they have choice to reject some, based on their interest to drive to that specific place, which has become a quite common phenomenon of late.

[Source: Times Of India]

Offering a unique selection of premium lingerie for Indian women, Zivame was started by Richa Kar and Kapil Karekar in April of this year and is a product of Actoserba Active Retail. It offers over 200 lines of lingerie styles, including bridal, plus-size, and swimwear from premium brands such as Enamor, Jockey, and Triumph.

The homepage includes easy navigation into different types of lingerie, and highlights some best sellers, new arrivals, and the staff’s top picks. You can also browse by brand, color, and size, and even choose items by selecting which type of dress they want to wear it under, for example beneath an evening dress, a saree, or a T-shirt.

Upon choosing a piece of lingerie, you will be taken to the product page where you can browse through additional information, choose a color and the size of your preference, and then finally purchase it using a credit cards, or online banking – and there’s even the option for cash on delivery.

If you’re still confused as to what is the right lingerie to suit a specific mood, occasion, or outfit, Zivame also offers styling consultations and bra fitting guidelines on its blog — aptly called “Fitting Room”, through its in-house fitters Zoe and Zia.

Richa Kar, founder and CEO, has said they are currently focusing on providing a fast, friendly, and reliable service for female Indian consumers. However, five years down the road, they plan to expand Zivame’s product portfolio to include many more products and introduce premium international brands in the women’s apparel and accessories category.