The only challenge is to get more users so that critical mass is attained

How did you come across the idea for a Hindi Search Engine?

We have evolved from Indicus Analytics (www.indicus.net),
a socio-economic research organization. In a lot of our studies on development,
one of the important findings was that the pace of development can be increased
by the use of IT, but it has to be in the local language. Finally, working on
the rating of panchayats we realized that it could also be a tool for
empowerment. While we had been talking about this a lot, it was our commitment
to the effort we put on our studies that we implement what we talk. A lot of
people discouraged us by citing Google, Yahoo and MSN as competitors, lack of a
market, and experience. But the entire team realized that this was about
passion, about belief and about making a difference.

Google is also available in Hindi, how different is Raftaar from
Google?

Google is the king of search engine technology, however, their Hindi
solution lacked usability and hence we decided to develop Raftaar. First and
foremost there is no easy-to-use solution to key in your query in Devnagari
script, hence the interface of Raftaar. Also, the focus of Raftaar was the
average Indian and in rural areas this type of user has typically, at most,
completed primary schooling. Thus, the visual keyboard to enable him to type in
his query using the mouse. Second, the search of Google is limited to only sites
that have Unicode font. Sites based on ASCII fonts such as Kruti, Susha, etc.
cannot be searched in Devnagari, while Raftaar searches across all sites
irrespective of the font.

Why has Hindi on the Internet not really picked up as, say,
Cantonese? What are the challenges and possible solutions?

Lack of standardization was one reason, the other being that the present
Indian net user is bilingualcomfort level with English is higher than in
China. As the net penetration reaches the smaller towns, blocks and big
villages, the requirement would be for local language content. This has happened
in the case of print, television, radio and I do not see any reason why it
should not happen for the Internet.

How will you popularize Raftaar? Any strategic tie-ups in the
offing?

Raftaar, or most online service, grow more from word of mouth than anything
else. Once a user has a delightful experience he will be ready to experiment and
then adopt the service. However, for the first experience we need to make users
aware of the services. For this, we would depend on all types of promotional
mix. It is too early for us to say which promotion mix we would adopt.

Shashwat DC

shashwatc@cybermedia.co.in