FullHyderabad May 11, 2008
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Local Search, Travel , add a commentFullHyderabad is an online city guide for Hyderabad and Secunderabad. The site has been operational since 2000 but like most of the bottom-up web startups, hasn’t gained a lot of traction (see the compete.com stats below- although I dont trust compete 100%, there is a story that the almost-real numbers tell).
What I like about the site is it’s perseverance. FullHyderabad has stuck it out for more than 8 years with what seems like little outside financial support (they seem to have the usual ad-based business model). The site is fairly well designed and navigation is not hard to understand. Even though I know little about Hyderabad, the site content seems to be significant. There are classifieds, event info, hotel info etc. that seem to be fairly uptodate, although I do think that homepage is a bit overstuffed.
I think local entrepreneurial efforts like FullHyderabad are essential building blocks for web as an knowledge infrastructure. Once the physical web-connectivity starts being ubiquitous, what India will need to attract and retain internet users is content. The data gathered by initiatives like FullHyderabad will collectively fill that gap, and make internet useful for the masses. Hope they survive on their own and resist being consumed by one of the horizontal portals like yahoo/rediff/Indiatimes etc.
Burrp February 15, 2008
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Local Search , 2commentsBurrp! is an Indian local reviews website that came into existence around early 2006. Founded by the now relatively common category of ‘worked-in-SF-then-returned-to-India’ entrepreneurs, Burrp! started getting traction last year (see compete.com data).
These people have good taste- the site has a neat, minimalistic look (with very good, synchronized icons) and I found it easy to navigate. The content is divided per city (they cover 8 major metro areas, with more coming up) and basically consists of reviews and recommendations submitted by users. I did see a nice restaurant list for Delhi there (even the ubiquitous Aggarwal Sweet Corners of various locations are mentioned). The user reviews are few, but not rare. So it’s a good place to get a list of restaurants, bars, lounges and cafe’s at minimum.
The team behind Burrp! seems to be energetic about their mission. Nice additional features are the Blah magazine (online, user-generated lifestyle content), SMS alerts of new reviews in your area. Heck, I even think the tag cloud could be useful. Some good to-do stuff seems to be one their radar too- like the Burrp! TV (online TV guide).
Overall, I’m impressed and excited that such startups are gaining ground in India. I predict that they’ll get a good infusion of VC funding soon (Band of Angels…are you listening? anybody home?). Hope Burrp! team spends it wisely and keeps up the quality work in future.
Khichdee December 31, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Local Search , add a commentThink of Khichdee as the Indian answer to Craigslist. Launched around October 2006, Khichdee aims to aggregate online and offline classifieds in India.
Just like Craigslist, it does a great job at displaying a no-nonsense view of the immense sea of classifieds posted. The interface is simplistic and thankfully devoid of distracting graphics. There is a lot of content- you can look for everything from a matrimonial, auto, property to coins, fengshui, home appliances. Khichdee was voted one of the best non-US web 2.0 websites by Business 2.0 magazine (link to the article in July’07 issue).
A part of Khichdee’s success can be attributed to the fact that they can afford mass marketing. Having a TV commercial about your website can go a long way in getting it off the ground in India. Khichdee is backed by a prominent Indian business family- MK Sanghi Group. They have diversified operations in Industrial manufacturing, Auto Dalerships, Hotels etc. Their eCommerce ventures besides Khichdee include lo.karloba.at, indiacar.com, cuttingchaai.com and indiabike.com. More on them later.
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 