How has the mindset of an Indian Internet consumer changed over the last
few years?
Internet usage in India is in a growth phase. Based on comScore numbers
comparing June 2007 to June 2008, the Internet unique users in India have grown
by 26% and in the same timeframe unique users on search properties have grown by
31%. Google, Yahoo! Live, and Ask are some of the leading search engines being
used by the Indian demography.
How does the Metasearch technology pose for the Indian market? Who are
your search partners?
Metasearch technology provides users with the best of the best results each
time. No single search engine covers the entire Internet, as different engines
use different technologies and thus draw different results from the vast pool of
available information. Our search partners include Google, Yahoo! Windows Live
Search, Ask.com, MIVA, and Looksmart. The technology transmits a search request
to several search engines and asks to provide the accumulated result. The
technology, therefore, saves time and provides the best possible results for
users.
What is your strategy and investment plan in India?
We will continue to leverage the pool of talent in the Internet/search
domain for development and R&D of products. We have already opened up our first
R&D center in India at Bangalore. We have, so far, invested $2.2 mn during FY
08 and our revenue for FY 07 was $140 mn. We will continue to focus on the R&D
part and expect to make a large impact on the Indian market.
What is the nature of work undertaken at the India R&D center?
The focus of our R&D center is to develop work for a wide range of products
in the areas of private label search, private label portal, DNS assist services,
etc. Within a year of our operations in India, our center has built two
productsPortal and DNS (Domain Name Server).
While the private label, Portal is a robust turnkey solution that enables
ISPs to provide a wide variety of integrated content and services uniquely
targeted at their consumers, the DNS Assist solution is a server side set of
applications that capture error traffic and provide end users a helpful set of
suggestions for navigation. This is an early stage market and we have had
several trials in the US and Europe and are encouraged by the results.
Jatinder Singh
maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in