Guruji.com is Indias only desi search engine

In a market ruled by international biggies, how does Guruji differentiate
itself in terms of content and reach?

Guruji.com is Indias only desi search engine. We are not a search portal like
Rediff which only aggregates news, and we are not as general as the Googles and
Yahoos of the world. We cater to Indian audiences exclusively and our vision is
to become the web resource of choice for the Indian web user. As a starting step
toward achieving this goal, we have smartly identified segments that are very
Indian and have mass appeal. We also have heavy emphasis on Indian language
content. All this with the central aim of becoming a one-stop search solution
for India.

Could you explain the segments that are exclusively Indian in your site?

More than exclusively Indian, the right term to use is strong Indian
appeal. Guruji.com is the only music search provider in India, for music in
Indian languages, and Hindi, where the user needs to enter either the movie
name, song name, singer name, etc to get links to resources that offer versions
of songs that would normally not be found in CDs or soundtracks.

What are your offerings in the Indian language space?

Though we began as an English-language site, we quickly incorporated Indian
languages to ensure that we do not miss out on the major chunk of local
language-speaking audience. In India, Guruji has realized that Internet
penetration is quite low and content in local languages will urge users to
embrace the Internet and make it part of their daily lives. We expect that in
the next 3-4 years, the adoption of Indian language Internet will be at par with
international standards.

What are some of the challenges you are preparing to face in the area of
local language search?

The biggest challenge with Indian languages is the interpretation of a
search term. The context in which the user is seeking information about a word
like partner, for instance, can be quite confusing. Guruji should be able to
predict if the user is looking for information about Partner, the
Govinda-starrer movie or a life partner.

This becomes an added challenge since words in regional languages have the
same problem depending on the language, region where the search is being made,
and the intent of the searcher.

Vishnu Anand

maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in