Jul 04, 2001 03:25 PM
12879 Views
Indya.com is a dumb portal. I emphasize DUMB. Please do not visit the portal after reading my review.
Indya.com was promoted by a smart opportunist company called Microland, which some analyst thought was the best IT company born in India. Microland's founder Pradeep Kar, could not bear that newcomers such as rediff.com and sify.com could overtake him. It hurt his ego. This guy has a big wallet, so in April 2000 he thought his Big Fat Wallet can help him launch a portal that would beat rediff.com
They launched the portal in April 2000 by buying the COMPLETE FRONT PAGE of most major newspapers in India. The headline read India changes it's name to Indya.com (sic) Indya.com spent more than $4 million in their launch campaign but as Master Card says, there are somethings which Money can't buy! And Indya.com could never even come close to the average Tom Dick Harry site, forget big portals.
What is Indya.com?
I should rephrase that: What WAS Indya.com
According to their CEO, Sanjay Lulla (I call him Lallu which is a slang meaning dumb! ''indya.com, the ultimate Internet home for India is poised to trigger the fast & vast growth the Indian economy is about to undergo ...'' there goes their ego. The CEO of Indya.com has no clue of how the IT industry works. He thought he could use his ad-industry background and win the portal race in the country by making a big brand using the creative satements of his stupid colleagues.
In reality, Indya.com achieved nothing. They could never finalize even the colour scheme for their website. Every 20 days they changed the index page. Finally to hide their goofy designs, they announced that their colour schemes are dynamic! Big Joke!
Not a single channel of Indya.com was functional. Finally they launched their e-campus channel. Desperately trying to woo the student users. Students today are more intelligent than Lallu. They never visited this new channel.
Management:
Lallu brought in Neeti Chopra, to make deals with leading companies worldwide in order to complement and enrich the services and channels indya.com already offers while catering to our user's 24x7 needs.'' She is fit to be a good copy-writer I think. She can write good speeches, that's it. She gives dumb interviews in magazines such as A&M etc., trying to program your mind to believe that indya.com is the best.
CEO, Lallu, is a lallu, nothing more can be said about him.
I think the only deal they were successful in was the acquisition of net2travel.com
Rajiv Vij, is a very dynamic man. I think Lallu should bring in more people like him. Net2travel is really bringing some money for indya.com Most of Neeti and Lallu's strategies are burning cash.
Current Position:
Indya.com is dying. Arun Katiyar recently laid off 75 employees. Star TV one of the investor in indya.com is slowly withdrawing support to Indya.com That reminds me, portals such as Baazee.com and Indya.com are a big drain on Star TV. Market gossip has that Star will acquire Indya.com and integrate baazee...both portals built on hype.
My take on Indya.com
I say stay away from it. It's content is never updated. News is stale at time. Articles and write-ups have no relevance to user interests and passions. Colour scheme and pages are badly mismanaged. No uniformity and coherence in two pages. Speed is slow. Above all, they have maligned and ridiculed the name of my motherland, INDIA.
