AutoIndia April 17, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Automobiles , add a commentAutoIndia is a online marketplace for Indian automobiles. They started back in late 2005 and are headquartered in Trivandrum, Kerala. The site seems to be professionally designed, with some (minor) flaws, but well thought out in terms of scope. There is everything that an buyer/seller may need: forum, news, classifieds, reviews, advice, quotes, directory, etc. I tinkered around to get a sense of the content and couldn’t make up my mind. On one hand, I was able to locate 8 BMW’s for sale in Delhi (with pictures!), but couldn’t get a list of Bajaj dealers in Delhi. Maybe they are still ramping up after 1.5 years of existence.
Some notes for functionality though- It’d be a great idea to put a comma after digits to help figure out difference between thousands, lakhs and crores. Seriously, I was squinting at the screen to figure out how many damn zeros were there for a 1994 BMW318Ci. That may be the reason why more than one car seemed to be priced wrong… there was a 2004 X5 with a asking price of Rs.14,000.00 (14 thousand- Heck, I’ll take two)!! I’m sure the poor seller meant to write Rs.14,000,00 (14 Lakh) but got confused. I don’t blame him/her, this is just poor site design
.
Their tagline left me scratching my head: “Indian Dream Drive”. Makes no sense to me, but maybe it’s a south-India thing to throw in catchy words irrespective of overall meaning. I was also amused by the ownership section of their ‘About Us’ page- It simply says “Strategic joint-venture 100% owned and funded by NRI’s”. Nice.. that really narrows it down for us.
Seedfund.in April 13, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Technology , add a commentI heard about Seedfund on a podtech.net podcast and looked it up. Apparently, it’s financially backed by google to do early-stage investments in India (undisclosed amount). That perhaps explains their googlesque homepage: terse, candid and lays the big picture out in simple, conversation-like language.
It’s a fund to keep an eye on.
eIndiaBusiness April 13, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Local Search , add a commenteIndiaBusiness aims to be an online B2B “Trade Directory” of Indian companies - exporters, manufacturers, suppliers, service providers and what not. Their goal seems to be the online yellow pages for Indian commerce.
Their content seems to be decent- if you want to know any producer for ‘flavored cashews’ or ‘portable suction units’, you’ll get a lead here. It’s the presentation that is a bit off. Setting up online “shops” is more than dumping print catalogs and yellow pages into HTML. In my usual over-critical posts, I’ve often whined about how most Indian sites have unneeded flashing graphics. Well, this site fueled my criticism further.
So here is the complete list- I call it the ‘Hallmarks of an average Indian website
‘ :
- It’ll have at least one flashing/blinking graphic persisting on every page
- It’ll have 150% times the information that can be crammed into a homepage
- Navigation links will be clustered together enough to make it unnecessarily harder to find what you are looking for. Usually this undifferentiated bunch is found at the bottom of the webpage.
- The ‘About Us’ page always displays pilfered generic text about ‘Company & People’, ‘Our Mission’, ‘Our Approach’ etc. This section never reveals anything useful like a leader’s name/background.
- The Homepage title bar is brimming with overflowing keywords to optimize search engine ranking without regard to actual identification of page content.
- Most of them will immodestly claim to be “world’s biggest <something> portal”, “The number one <something> website”. As if it matters to write it blatantly.
I realize that by writing such posts I run the risk of inviting the wrath of someone who actually designed the site. Then I’ll get angry comments like “It’s easy to write negative, try doing it yourself”, or the more terse “You suck”. But I think it’s still worth saying my mind 
IndiaMike April 8, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Travel , 2commentsIndiaMike is a travel forum focused on India. It’s a great resource for getting candid travel advise if you are planning to visit India. The interface is simple and straight-forward, without obtrusive advertisements.
There is an interesting story behind IndiaMike. It started as a personal page in late 2001 for a guy named Mike, and grew into a community of nearly 10,000 members over six years. Now its run by another philanthropic soul Arjun. Compete reports nearly 6000 unique monthly visitors for it, which is pretty good, if you ask me.
The site doesn’t have a source of revenue, so I hope it keeps going on its own.
TheProudSikh April 4, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Individual , add a commentTheProudSikh is a site promoting Sikhism through custom animation, wallpapers, quizzes and other tools. My initial reaction was different, but having clicked around on couple of different occasions, I think this site is cool.
Good educational tools, downloads and links here if you are interested in knowing about Sikhism. The animation is above average for an independent developer. It’s a perfect example of religious education 2.0 
Good know people are motivated to do such work.
MedicalTourismIndia April 4, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Healthcare , 5commentsMedicalTourismIndia is focused on promoting travel to India for healthcare. Although medical tourism is not a new phenomenon, it has surfaced in a formal way recently with such websites. This site is owned by Erco Travels (based out of Delhi, since 1999) - they operate in India, Mauritius, Netherlands and Belgium.
Although the site graphics broke down in FireFox 2.0, they looked fine when I switched to IE. The site content is a curious mix- although majority talks about Indian hospitals and facilities available, the pure travel links are oddly right next to medical ones (Once you click on any hospital name, bottom menu brings up a section about “India Tour Packages”).
Health Tourism concept is all fine with me, but being a healthcare professional myself, I feel a bit odd referring to medical care as “Medical Travel Packages” and “Hospital Packages”. I don’t think that placing leisure travel packages right next to medical ones helps either.
I recently read Oren Harari’s ‘Break From the Pack’ that talks about commoditization of everything. Clayton Christensen also talks about commoditization of healthcare in this article (needs subscription). I guess blurring the line between tourism and care delivery is a step towards it, although I’m still uncomfortable with the way it’s being marketed… 