Gateway to a vast array of online resources
Financial Times, London, December 02, 1998

The newcomer has already become the country's most visited web site.

Intel, the world's largest semiconductor manufacturer, has been notably absent from the list of US technology companies, including other chipmakers such as Texas instruments and Motorola, that have set up software development or design operations in India.

But, during a recent visit to India, Graig Barrett, Intel's new chief executive agreed to make the group's first direct investment in India - a small minority stake of about 10 per cent in a Mumbai (Bombay) based Internet content start-up that plans to become India's premier portal site.

Rediff was set up two and a half years ago by Ajit Balakrishnan.

'We want to be the ultimate portal site for Indians in India and overseas, says Mr Balakrishnan, who has assembled a team, including 15 journalists, to help turn his ambitions into reality.

The portal site, which has already become India's most visited web site with more than 650,000 visitors a month, provides its own news service, a free e-mail service and a home page creation service which enables users to construct their own web homepages without technical assistance.

Other services include an online job listing service, which now lists more than 2,000 vacancies daily and which allows online applications. It also provides a gateway to the vast information resources now available on the web about India and is pioneering consumer e-commerce with an expanding range of transactional services.

These include an electronic music store featuring 40,000 titles, a bookshop with 100,000 titles, a Divali (Hindu Festival of Light) gift shop, film reviews and Bombay theatre booking service and online travel agency enabling visitors to choose and book hotels in India online.

"We want to build a revenue stream based on both advertising and transaction revenues," says Mr Balakrishnan, So far, the site, built using IBM's Net.Commerce software running on Intel-based Pentium II servers, has 25 advertisers. He reckons 20 per cent of Indians overseas already log into the site. 'Our goal is to have a 40 per cent share,' he adds.