Yahoo! bets big on India

Web portal Yahoo! is betting big on India, announcing that it would become Yahoo!'s hub for designing and handling of products and services in Asia and Latin America in line with its emphasis on the emerging markets.

Ahead of Time Warner's internet division AOL making its foray in India, Thursday, April 26, Yahoo! has designated India as the Centre of Excellence for Product Engineering for 'Emerging Markets' and has hinted that India will be the center for enabling growth of Yahoo in emerging markets.

"The Bangalore Development Centre continues to grow rapidly and has crossed the 1000 mark in headcount. I'm confident that the team will provide technology leadership, innovation and proficiency in handling the engineering operations for the Emerging Markets group," Yahoo! co–founder David Filo who was in Bangalore to inaugurate a facility with 2,20,000 square feet area, with a seating capacity of 1600, April 25, said.

Filo also officially announced the launch of two initiatives for the Indian market, namely, 'India Our City' and 'India Maps.'

Both these products were designed and developed locally, a Yahoo! India release said. Yahoo! India Our City beta is a Web 2.0 mashup application from Yahoo!

"This was the direct outcome of the internal Hack Day event organized at Yahoo! India R&D where the idea was conceived and productized," a Yahoo! release said.

The first link, which can be accessed by users at http://in.ourcity.yahoo.com provides an updated perspective of a city as seen and experienced by people. It profiles 20 Indian cities – Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Bhopal, Bubhaneswar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kochi, Kolkata, Lucknow, Madurai, Mangalore, Mumbai, Mysore, Pune, Shimla and Thiruvananthapuram. The new portal provides editorial and user generated content including news, photos and maps of each individual cities in English as well as local languages. Users can use the link to explore photos, videos, maps, podcasts, event informations, news, weather and blogs of each of these 20 cities which will be gradually increased and share them with others.

"The product aggregates both editorial and user generated content. Currently, we are covering 20 cities across the country, including tier–one cities such as Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai with a differentiated offering and tier–two cities such as Bhubaneswar, Bhopal, Madurai, Chandigarh and Jaipur," Yahoo! India managing director George Zacharias told reporters here at a preview of the products.

Similarly, Yahoo! India maps beta – http://in.maps.yahoo.com – provides street level search functionality with street maps, satellite map and hybrid maps. Users can search over 170 cities, 4,785 towns and 220,000 villages across the country.

Details of street name, locality, city and district can be found with other services such as hospitals, chemists, hotels, ATMs, etc. The map data is being provided by CE Infosystems and is complaint with the Indian government regulations.

"We innovate to enhance the end–user experience. The emergence of Web 2.0 and user generated content offers our netizens a unique local offering," said Zacharias.

Zacharias said that the company targets the $60 million online advertisement market in India, with the launch of both these products. It is estimated that India has roughly about 25 million unique Internet users every month.