Well go local and then search seems to be the mantra thats catching on the web. So if one player like guruji.com which was funded for 7 million$ wasn’t enough there are a bunch of other players like burrp, onyomo, tolmolbol and justdial which was funded by SAIF partners (btw justdial is my favourite coz it worked for me).

And now it seems that 4interactive which was funded by matrix partners earlier when it was in stealth mode and there was no clue as to why were they funded?? has cleared the confusion by launching a local search engine called asklaila.com (wow talk about suggestive domain names!).

For those who aren’t indian laila and majnu can be classified as the indian counterparts of juliet and romeo. So laila found her majnu even before the was born (launched.) Ask laila and she will attempt to answer all the questions that begin with Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? atleast thats what their site says.

The site is currently banglore focussed and has categories like finedine, events, local services, lifestyle and shopping. I guess asklaila is pretty much in the league of burrp, tolmolbol and onyomo when it comes to similarity in offering.

I see too many players in local search and frankly i doubt the potential (call me a pessimist or call me an idiot). I mean beyond the large metros places are not big enough to have local search i.e. locals know all the places in smaller towns and easier to ask someone in 20 seconds than waste 2 mins and internet money online.  I would love to have someone trash my opinion and infuse some optimism in me with regards to local search.. Please comment..

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