Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) has acquired a 30 percent stake in Indian telephone-directory search service called Call Ezee, which is owned by Network Management Co., reports Reuters. Yahoo’s cash infusion will help the company expand its reach from covering 14 cities to up to 50, and grow its information data base five-fold to 10 million numbers. It also seeks to improve call volumes by up to 10 times by year-end 2009. Currently, Call Ezee is estimated to generate about 10,000 calls a day, according to San Francisco Business Times. The company’s competition includes Google (NSDQ: GOOG), which has launched local search in India; JustDial; AskLaila, which is creating local search content and reviews about companies; and Guruji.com, which is funded by Sequoia Capital and is primarily Internet based and is becoming more of a general search engine for India.
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Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) has acquired a 30 percent stake in Indian telephone-directory search service called Call Ezee, which is owned by Network Management Co., reports Reuters. Yahoo’s cash infusion will help the company expand its reach from covering 14 cities to up to 50, and grow its information data base five-fold to 10 million numbers. It also seeks to improve call volumes by up to 10 times by year-end 2009. Currently, Call Ezee is estimated to generate about 10,000 calls a day, according to San Francisco Business Times. The company’s competition includes Google (NSDQ: GOOG), which has launched local search in India; JustDial; AskLaila, which is creating local search content and reviews about companies; and Guruji.com, which is funded by Sequoia Capital and is primarily Internet based and is becoming more of a general search engine for India.
News portal and Internet search firm, Yahoo, has acquired up to 30 per cent stake in Chennai-based Call Ezee, a tele-information service provider from its paent to Info Network Management Company (INMAC), for an undisclosed amount.
The acquisition as made through Yahoo's Dutch subsidiary,
Yahoo did not disclose how much it paid for the stake in INMAC but said that it has a revenue-sharing agreement as well as one representation out of the five member board.
Call Ezee, operates a telephone directory search service across 14 cites in India, including Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Kolkata. Consumers can call the local Call Ezee number from any mobile or fixed line phones and ask details of any business or firms that offer the product they want as well as offer round the clock helpline for medical emergencies.
Indian businesses can be listed on Call Ezee's directory free, but sales leads are charged on a premium listing or on a "pay for performance" basis.
INMAC, which handles around 10,000 calls per day from consumers and helps two million customers across verticals, intends to upgrade its technology and increase its manpower from the existing 450 plus to 2000 by the year end so as to handle the expanded business by tripling its reach across India.
''We aim to gain market share by reaching out to untapped markets and advertisers in India,'' said INMAC's founder and chief executive officer, T.S. Narayanaswamy to reporters.
"The Yahoo investment will enable us to scale operations and extend our reach across the country to 26 more cities by 2010'' he added.
"Our investment will help Info Network to establish as a national player in the directory search service. The Indian local search market is seeing rapid growth, driven by increasing use of mobile phones by consumers to search and find local businesses and services," Yahoo's emerging markets head, Keith Nilsson said in a statement.
The two companies will start with data integration of its lists and Yahoo also plans to look at other methods of integrating the business models of INMAC and Yahoo, Nilsson said.
Yahoo and INMAC main competitors are business listings provider, Getit, Justdial, Ask Laila-run by Bangalore based Four Interactive Ltd.
Its bigger rival, Google is planning to launch an interactive voice response-based automated phone directory service in New Delhi and Hyderabad.
Yahoo's earlier investments in India were Bharatmatrimony.com portal and Tyroo Media Ltd.
By Sahad Pv (VCCircle.com)
The current local search market is dominated by JustDial and Infomedia Group's Yellow Pages.
The Indian local search market is hotting up with Internet giant Yahoo acquiring a 30% stake in Chennai-based Network Management Co. Pvt. Ltd (Inmac), which owns the telephone-based directory search service Call Ezee.
The current local search is dominated by JustDial and Infomedia Group's Yellow Pages, while there are newer entrants like AskLaila of Four Interactive and Guruji.com.
Call Ezee claims to have services in 14 cities across India. Yahoo's investment in INMAC is not known. According to the company founder and Chief Executive T. S. Narayanaswamy, Yahoo's cash infusion and technology will help the company expand its reach to some 40-50 cities, grow its information data base five-fold to 10 million items and improve call volumes 10 times by end 2009, according to a report in The Hindu.
Call Ezee is primarily on phone, however local search companies have been adopting multi-media search to stay ahead of the market. Google has launched its local search in India, and is also said to be testing an interactive voice based local search. SAIF Partners-funded JustDial, by far the best, has a large phone based service, and has of late built up an exhasutive internet search engine.
Matrix Partners-funded AskLaila is creating local search content and reviews about local companies from scratch and is hoping to capture the market share at a later stage.
Sequoia Capital funded Guruji.com is primarily internet based and is becoming more of a general search engine for India rather than a local search firm. The company recently launched Guruji Finance.
Yahoo's entry to the Indian local search market will surely hot the space up.
Author :- Shashi Priya
If you want to order your favourite pizza or burger, you need not travel long distances to search for the outlet. Just log on to a local search engine and type the key words – Pizza in Koregaon Park, Pune – and you will have before you all related business listings in Pune along with contact details, articles, reviews and other useful information.
A category that has been grabbing the attention of the netizens, several such start-ups venturing into the Internet space, have seen tremendous growth in the last one year. Not surprisingly, even Google launched its own local search service, providing information about the city. Guruji, Justdial, Burrp, Dwaar, Onyomo, Khoj, Nirantar, Puneproperties and Ilaaka.com,which were launched in the city over the last two years, provide customers with better search experience and so do the localised versions of giants such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN.
A study by the Internet and Mobile Association of India says there are around 65 million people who use search engines in India and the current size for search engine advertising is $50 million. This will get doubled in the next couple of years. Swati Rahate, service manager, Justdial explains, "90 per cent of Internet search queries are local in nature and thus the need for local search engines is evident. Justdial is very local in nature and provides customers with relevant search results."
Burrp is another social lifestyle search engine and reviews website that has launched its service in the city. It is looking to add local flavour in each city they launch in, like for Pune they have also allowed users to locate, review and recommend Pune's famous home-run Irani bakeries, snack shops and college canteens along with normal restaurants and hang-outs. They have earlier launched in Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Delhi. "Built on a distributed architecture that can scale with the growing needs of the users, search engines's complex computing system crawls the web to identify local content, indexes the data and provides a simple keyword-based interface to access the information instantly," says Rahul Pethekar from Burrp, simplifying the complex software programme that goes behind scanning the web world for local needs.
With more and more companies vying to be noticed in Internet search results, the local search engine industry seems to have a lot to look forward to. So stop worrying about reference books, job openings and start thinking about keywords that can make your search easy!
Author:- Jayant Mishra in Mumbai
Talk about con-ectivity
Amid all the claims of Internet connectivity getting cheaper by the day, by Internet service providers, there is a hidden risk - getting your connection from a genuine operator.
Getting connected can become a real task for you, just in case you don’t reside in posh locations of Mumbai. Yes, the so called claims of bringing the whole of India under the broadband roof happens only in press releases , in reality Tata, Airtel, Reliance don’t even cover the whole of Mumbai.
Recently a customer, who shifted her base to Mumbai, was looking for internet connection and for convenience she dialed, ‘just dial’ for assistance. Of all the ISP’s who called her, few like Airtel refused, clearing that they won’t have connectivity in this area, Tata indicom did the same, where as, Reliance claimed to have feasibility.
The customer, who wished to be unnamed, said, next day, before I could call up Reliance I got a call from Tata, with one of the agents asking me for my address, saying they call can allot me the connection. I didn't question much, relying on the brand Tata.
“I filled the form and wrote the cheque in favour of the company and relied on agents word that the connection will be up and running in six days maximum, taking in to consideration the time needed for convincing the housing society, if any glitch”, said the customer.
I waited and finally decided to call Milind Tata (agents name) to know about the proceeding, to my surprise he said, we tried but it’s not possible and changed his previous claims saying “that’s why madam I told in six days I will confirm”. I straightway asked him about the refund of the cheque, which was Rs 2,124 that included the installation charges, deposit and first month fees.
(You can expect call from them only the first date when they come to collect the cheque).
Milind in his vernacular singing tone told me, “Madam don’t take tension, I will come and give you the cheque and banged the phone”.
The customer having wasted lot of time, decided to call up Reliance instead on 27th November, a day after Mumbai terror mayhem started. Reliance agent, Pooja was quick to co-operate and send a guy for form filling and cheque collection, on a note saying when most are not operating today, we will ensure that we help you in the best possible way.
The customer did the needful, gave the cheque and to insure better update took direct number of Pooja. She was promised to have her connection up and running in four days maximum. Next day she received call from another Reliance agent for net connection, who told her that this is for Reliance fixed Wimax, as your area that is Kangur Marg (central Mumbai) doesn’t have wired connection. When the customer told the agent that Pooja from Reliance has already collected the cheque for wired connection, he said“it is not possible as we don’t have wired connectivity in your area, could you please give me pooja’s number.”
“Though he never called me back, sensing some thing is fishy I called up Pooja, who again went on speaking as if she had not spoken since ages. With not much of choice in hand I waited for another two days and then called up Pooja, only to hear it will be done” the customer said.
Days passed by and then one fine day with an aggressive tone, I called and asked her if today my connection will be up, since the due date has passed. Pooja said, the technicians have left and your house is not in the list. I understood, that she is bluffing, so I asked her for my cheque and she said without apprehensions that I will get my cheque. That made it clear; I was again fooled like before,” she added.
To know the real picture of this drama, when Examiner called up the Pooja, and asked her, why does she take calls, despite knowing, she will not be able to be of any help to the customer? Pooja, took the call thinking it was one of her customers call, and said “Sir, I am a student and do part times job here, my incentives depend on the number of cheque’s I bring in from my side.”
So when will your customer get the refund cheque, Pooja? “ I am sorry sir, though it generally takes 30 days, but I will make sure that you get it soon, that’s the best I can do.” Her way of speaking and agreeing on everything made it clear that she was an amateur and didn’t know much about the sales job she was doing.
Do all your customers, who are tricked, get their cheque back? They have to raise complain for it, sir, Pooja said. So until they don’t call you, don’t you guys call them to notify that their connection will not be possible and they will get the cheque back? No, sir, they should call for it.
However, this time Pooja made sure that the customer gets the cheque. “Yes, I got the cheque after four days, but have still not got the cheque from Milind Tata. I tried calling his superior who had sent Milind, he referred me to his superior who sounded humble and asked for the name of the guy who had come to pick the registration form and cheque. I gave him the name, after which he said he will get back to me in some time. After five minutes, he called up and said there is no Milind in his team and my registration name doesn’t show up in his list, so it must have been one of the con man.”
Tired with continued stories, the customer called up Milind only to hear he was not available. “It cannot be fake, I signed on Tata Indicom’s receipt book and even the cheque was signed against the company name,’ argued the customer.
Poonam, a MBA student, during her college project on broadband found similar experiences from lots of customers, following up with the project on fraud cases, she found agents representing these big companies approach every possible call they get, no matter if they can help the customer of not, their prime objective is to collect the cheque, as their bonuses depend on this.
But how can their bonuses be calculated if the company fails to accomplish the connection? Poonam, said, during my investigation my whistle blower told me that none of these agents maintain a proper record, there are lot of small private agencies who work for recovering the forms and cheques. There objective is to get as many as cheques as possible, in case of downturn they don’t react until the customer calls and nags, most customers in a fast paced city like Mumbai don’t have time and patience to call the agents on regular basis, in that case the company benefits from the cheque.
In some cases they get away with saying some fraudster must have collected the cheque from you. Out of 10 such cases, only seven customers are able to get their money back, the rest give up.
So next time when you plan for your Internet connection, make sure you don’t suffer, as the suffering can become mental and financial both. Talking with friends and colleagues, asking which ISP they are using can also be handy, as that at least assures the ISP can actually offer a service.
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