With the growing demand for local information, Noida based Majestic IT Services Limited has introduced Zatse, a Local Information & Solution Centre for the Delhi NCR region with pan India expansion plans in sight. The services include providing local information over the phone to customers by simply dialing 6800-6800 or by logging on to their website. The information can also be delivered via mail...

Malaysian Investor Astro is picking up 50% stake in New-Delhi based GETIT Infoservices for Rs 96 crore, after the latter’s investment proposal was approved by the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB). Getit Infoservices which is into Directional Advertising media is the publisher of Yellow pages and FreeAds, India’s first free-classified advertising paper. Getit plans to use the money...

Another local search portal has joined the wagon – Askme.in (beta version). This portal has been launched by Infomedia 18. Listings are distributed under 18 categories and 74 cities. Infomedia is calming to have more than 3 million business listings. Quick Look to Features: Click to Call Narrow Search Take business card on phone via SMS Share on FB, Twitter only Preview of ad on yellowpages, just...

We had questioned at the time of the sale of Burrp to Infomedia18 on whether this deal was a strategic sale or a distress one! Well now the cat or the amount in this case is out of the bag. Burrp was sold for 4.25 crores as per the SEBI filing by Infomedia18. This amounts to less than a million dollar valuation and if you ask my first reaction to this its was.. Wow thats CHEAP! But lets not let first...

The mobile is becoming or rather say has already become the first point of information access and a useful service like mobile classifieds has significant demand. Matrix Partners India recently announced their investment in one such mobile classified service called Ver Se Innovation Private Limited which is based in Bangalore. The investmenst figure is said to be Rs. 20 crore. They deal with various...

AskLaila one of India’s local information search engine ties up with HindustanTimes.com to enhance their reach to more audience. The tie-up is to form a co-branded city information microsite which will enable users to search for local services and event information across 12 Indian cities. This page also has an option that takes you directly to HT’s homepage, while he/she can also set HT as...

A recent Comscore report about the state of the search engines in India states the obvious – Google is an undisputed leader in the space with close to 88.4% market share. The remaining dozen is shared by big names like Yahoo and Microsoft along with local search engines like Guruji, AskLaila and JustDial. So statistically speaking, despite remaining in the space for close to 3-4 years and in...

The local search space came into focus in India way back in 2006 with the funding of guruji.com and then there were a flurry of players that ventured into this space right from onyomo, asklaila, yulop, burrp and a few others. The year 2008 started with Asklaila launching its local search services in mumbai and guruji going vernacular with its local listings. After the regional foray guruji added mobile...

Telecom players seem to be waking up to the power of local search so both Airtel and BPL seem to have launched local search products that their large subscriber base can use. While BPL Mobile has launched the local search service only in Mumbai, Airtel with its tie up with AskLaila has launched the service across 6 cities i.e. Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Bangalore. The point to note...

Yes we are back this time with a WATShow with Sulekha Director of Brand and Global Marketing on Sulekha.com’s focus, local commerce, userbase demographics, on their competition and also on their expansion plans. He also speaks about the recent tie up with Career Builder. Also note his reference to Asklaila a prospective competitor which he denies is of any significance. Check out the WATShow below: httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM4eM_LKkwU Hope...