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Tag: George Zacharias

  • Reliance teams up with Yahoo! India to offer instant messaging service

    Reliance teams up with Yahoo! India to offer instant messaging service

    MUMBAI: Reliance Communications has teamed up with Yahoo! India to offer instant messaging service to its customers.

    Mobile IM will allow Reliance Mobile customers to chat live with other Reliance customers, as well as any Yahoo! IM user in the world using their PC.

    Customers can send instant messages and chat online using all of the Yahoo! IM features such as simultaneous multi-chat windows, presence status icon, emoticons, Yahoo! personal contact list and profile, multiple chat windows and view off-line messages. Reliance’s Yahoo! IM is “always connected” to deliver instant messages, informs an official release.

    “Reliance is bridging the Digital Divide by extending the Internet-rich IM experience of the PCs to its mobile subscribers for the first time in India”, said Reliance Communications president – applications content and solutions Group Mahesh Prasad. “This brings us one step closer towards the convergence of the mobiles and the PCs”, he added.

    Yahoo! India MD George Zacharias said, “We are glad to partner with Reliance for Mobile IM services, in India. This unique service will add a new dimension in enhancing our user experience and provide yet another compelling way to stay connected, instantly and at all times.”

    Yahoo! Instant Messenger service client interface for Reliance was developed by ACL Wireless. Yahoo! Messenger for mobile is available on all BREW, WAP and Nokia colour handsets using Java technologies.

    Reliance Mobile customers can access Mobile Instant Messenger by clicking on Reliance Mobile World > hot n new > Yahoo! Msgr. Customers will be charged Rs. 5 for each session logged and can send and receive unlimited instant messages.

    This is not the first time that Reliance Mobile has collaborated with Yahoo! Infact, Yahoo! Mail has been part of Reliance Mobile World’s suite of WebMail services for over two years.

  • Yahoo! India Answers unveils ‘Ask the Planet’ series to its knowledge sharing platform

    Yahoo! India Answers unveils ‘Ask the Planet’ series to its knowledge sharing platform

    MUMBAI: Yahoo! India has unveiled a new series titled ‘Ask the Planet’ on its existing knowledge sharing platform Yahoo! India Answers, which acts as a forum and social community for its users.

    The internet giant has zeroed in on India and following the launch of what they call the ‘social media search,’ with the ‘Ask the Planet’ campaign, Yahoo! has outlined a regionalization plan to be implemented within the first and second quarter of 2007. Similar to the localization of their messenger service ‘Indichat’ into eight languages, the company is also looking at expanding the ‘Ask the Planet’ series into several local languages.

    The latest series has roped in Indian luminaries from myriad backgrounds to pose questions pertaining to education, health, law and enforcement, games and recreation, society and culture. This series will continue for a period of six weeks, allowing users to answer string of questions posed by these achievers. On the opening day, the first question was posted by the president of India, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam who asked, “What should we do to free our planet from terrorism?”

    Taking the campaign forward, the company will conduct an All India School outreach program visiting 25 cities and urging kids to respond to the president’s question. Finally, president Kalam will select 10 lucky winners who will get the opportunity to go on an educational trip to the Silicon Valley. Additionally, the top 50 respondents will also get to interact with the president on a trip to Delhi. The winners will be announced at the end of February.

    Besides, having the opportunity to answer questions posed by prominent Indians, the common man can even pose and answer the simplest of questions. What’s more, each registered user can earn points “reputation” for his participation.

    Speaking at the launch Yahoo! India MD George Zacharias said, “We are delighted to bring ‘Ask the Planet’ Series to India. In line with the objective of Yahoo! Answers in creating a rich knowledge repository, the ATP Series will provide an innovative platform for the millions of Indians based on their real life experiences, to answer some of the biggest questions that touch our lives today.”

    Yahoo! India Answers was initiated by Yahoo! in April 2006. Starting June 2006, Yahoo! began a series called ‘Ask the Planet’ on Answers where luminaries such as Dr. Stephen Hawking, former US vice president Al Gore, U2s Bono to name a few have asked questions on subjects ranging from survival of human race to eradication of poverty. The service currently exists in 16 languages across the world.
     

  • Yahoo and Canaan Partners invest US$8.95 mn in BharatMatrimony

    Yahoo and Canaan Partners invest US$8.95 mn in BharatMatrimony

    MUMBAI: Yahoo! Inc., and Canaan Partners, a global venture investor in technology companies, have announced that the companies have both invested US $8.65 million in BharatMatrimony.com Pvt. Ltd. Both investors will be represented on the board of the company. Veda Corporate Advisors acted as a strategic advisor to the transaction.

    The BharatMatrimony Group plans to significantly expand its presence on-ground and will also invest in the global personals space. BharatMatrimony already offers content in six Indian languages and soon plans to offer content in two more languages. As part of its expansion plans, BharatMatrimony Group expects to double its headcount to 700 by the end of this year.

    The company also plans to increase the number of BharatMatrimony Centres (BMC), its offline initiative, from 38 to over 300 across the country by 2008. BharatMatrimony has plans to open offices in UK and in key South East Asian markets to cater to the Indian Diaspora and to open up religion / country based matrimony portals, informs an offcial release.

    The matrimony service provider with 7.5 million registered members, BharatMatrimony Group CEO Murugavel Janakiraman said, “It gives me immense pride that two of the world’s leading companies in the technology and Internet space have invested in our business. More importantly, the global knowledge, partnerships and experience that both these investors bring will help us scale our business globally. The infused capital will be used to further sustain our leadership position in the matrimony sector. The investment will also be used to enhance our portfolio of services and take them to leadership positions in their respective sectors.”

    Canaan Partners executive director – India Alok Mittal said, “We are very excited to be an investor in BharatMatrimony. The company is very well positioned to grow rapidly and maintain its leadership in the Indian Internet landscape while continuing to be a highly valuable company from a social standpoint. The company’s services truly change the lives of millions of Indians around the world. India is one of the key markets for Canaan Partners and we are looking at creating lasting partnerships in the technology space and generating shareholder wealth over the coming years.”

    Mittal, who will represent Canaan Partners on the Board, was the founding managing director of a prominent job portal, JobsAhead.com. Janakiraman says that Mittal’s experience and expertise will give a strong competitive advantage to BharatMatrimony’s ClickJobs.com, adds the release.

    Commenting on Yahoo!’s investment in BharatMatrimony, , Yahoo! Inc. chief financial officer Susan Decker said, “India is one of the fastest growing Internet markets and our investment in BharatMatrimony furthers Yahoo!’s plans to extend our leading position in the country.”

    Yahoo! India managing director George Zacharias said, “BharatMatrimony Group’s strength in matrimonial and other services complements the strong offerings we already provide in the Indian market across communications, search, and mobile. On completion of the investment, Yahoo! India and BharatMatrimony Group will cooperate through a business partnership”.

  • Yahoo! India gets search innovative with ‘My Web 2.0’

    Yahoo! India gets search innovative with ‘My Web 2.0’

    MUMBAI: Yahoo! Search has released My Web 2.0, which is a “personal and social search engine,” in India.My Web 2.0 provides users a simple way to save, organise and tag actual web pages and bookmarks, recall them from any computer, as well as selectively share their personalised ‘My Web’ with friends and a broader community of users with similar interests.

    My Web content from a user’s own personal archive, as well as from a user’s community are also displayed in the typical web search results page, further complementing results from Yahoo!’s leading web search engine.

    Additionally, unlike bookmarks, a user’s “My Web” is accessible from any computer, with no risk of losing saved bookmarks.

    Yahoo! India managing director George Zacharias said, “Yet another example of Yahoo!’s innovative approach; My Web 2.0, dramatically improves the relevance of search results. The internet is becoming more community-orientated and users want access to trusted information. We see social search as the next phase of web search. My Web helps users tap into the power of communities, using tagging and sharing to improve their search experience. My Web 2.0 combine’s social search with the power of web search to provide the user with more relevant results”.

    When users sign up to My Web and run a search, they see results at the top of the page derived from content that they saved in My Web and interesting links that other people have saved as a complement to the normal web search results, providing an even more relevant search experience.

    My Web 2.0 provides significant feature enhancements to the earlier My Web product based directly on user feedback and include:

    Tagging: categorize saved pages in a much more flexible way than using folders by assigning them to multiple categories labeling the content with tags.

    Unidirectional connections: allows people to easily access valuable content that has been discovered by others, without having to have a personal relationship. This means that people can discover interesting pages of a specific user (it may be an industry expert, a celebrity, or your next door neighbor who knows something about everything and saves really useful links) and because you like what they are saving, you can subscribe to all of their pages. You can automatically add them as a contact and make them part of your community.

    Additional Sharing controls: My Web 2.0 offers increased control over who you are sharing with – you can choose to be the only person who can access the pages saved, you can identify the communities you share certain saved pages with (friends, family etc) or you can share your saved pages with the world.

    Enhanced Profile personalization: allows people to create a unique online identity, by assigning a photo or avatar, nickname and email address to their online identity, creating a more personal presence within the community. Over time, by personalising your presence, you could become a well-known web guru for the information you are saving and sharing.

    Easy import of web pages: users can import easily their bookmarks, and also save pages with one click directly with the Yahoo! Toolbar.