The Hindu Business Line : Guruji.com developing local language search engines

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Chennai Feb. 21 About 30 per cent of all global searches are local in nature. Most of us use Google to query India-specific information. It only seems logical then to have an India-specific search engine.

"Local search engines are the future. As Internet content gets local, so will search engines," says Mr R. Ramaraj, former Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Sify Ltd, who is now a board member of Guruji.com, a recently-launched Indian search engine. Russia, China, Korea and Germany have their own local language search engines.

"Search is the second most frequent activity on the Internet after e-mail usage. A vernacular search engine will attract more Internet users in India," says Mr Ramaraj. At present, there are about five crore Internet users accessing English content and about 15 crore are expected to be added by 2010. These will be driven mainly by vernacular content, he says.

Guruji.com is developing Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada platforms for its search engine, with the Hindi platform likely to be released in a few months. It plans to develop platforms for all Indian languages over the next year.

On the content front, the company is focused on `relevant search'. For instance, if one were to search for `newspaper', guruji.com would throw up links to Indian newspapers unlike Google that is more likely to show links to foreign newspapers.

The company's city-centric search (similar to a yellow pages listing) today covers 15 cities providing information on private and government entities including telephone numbers, URL or any other content provided by the owner. Large cities such as Mumbai have about 3 lakh listings while smaller ones like Pune have about 1-lakh listings.

According to Mr Anurag Dod, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder of Guruji.com, the company plans to cover 15 more cities by the end of this year.

"We also plan to add more content, like reviews and pictures," he said. An image search is also in the pipeline. The company has tied up with Tata Infomedia and also has an in-house team collecting information through field visits.

"We have invested about $100,000 so far on infrastructure alone. A significant amount will be spent on developing the vernacular search and extending the city search," said Mr Dod. Sequoia Capital has committed to invest $7 million in the company.

Guruji.com also plans to host online ads in future. "Search engine based marketing in India is doubling each year, though it still constitutes only 1 per cent of the total ad spend in the country," says Mr Ramaraj. The Internet and Mobile Association of India has estimated this market to be about $50 million.