In a small town somewhere in India, teenagers enrol themselves for a Basic Internet Course at the local NIIT centre. They get their first glimpse of the Internet and its potential, in their language.

Students around the country log on for the first time to check their State Board results - all in their native languages.

Scene II
Mumbai city. Deepak Raghav chats with a group of friends at eVarta. The jokes are all in Marathi. At the other end of the globe, in the US of A, Shambhavi and Dinesh get their daily dose of content, in Hindi: "This really is our world," they say.

All around the world, thousands of people are getting on to the Internet for the very first time. The computer, for them, remains an alien gizmo; but it's one that's finally beginning to talk their language.

Welcome to webdunia.

This is a huge world of Internet-based services spanning email, chat, search and e-greetings in 11 Indian languages. It also has four portals: in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam.

Independently run from their respective states, each of these sports an exhaustive number of channels ranging from news and finance to Bollywood, religion and festivals. They also boast 'City-Specials' with news and useful travel information covering 23 major Indian cities.

So, how did this idea come about? From a desire to empower all Indians on the Internet. So now, says Anu Babber, Vice President, Ad-Sales, Webdunia, "A youth in Jhumritalayya can chat and do the same things on the Net that an English-conversant youth in Mumbai can. Besides, we're all sold on the dream of developing online communities in our own languages."

The focus is completely on smaller Indian towns and cities, going beyond the top eight metros in an endeavour to open these new markets to the Internet. "Our rationale is that the ten top newspapers read and TV channels watched in the country are in the native languages; the Internet is not going to be any different," adds Babber.

Makes sense. Why, after all, does Deepak Raghav opt for a multilingual chat in the first place? "I feel happier and more comfortable with my Marathi friends. It lets me be a lot more intelligent and funny. In English, I have to think too much".

While language is important though, the main challenge is to develop compelling applications. For instance, the exam results of nine State Boards put up at webdunia drew over 25 lakh students -- many of them first-time users.

Vice President, Alliances and Business Development, Parvindar Singh Gujral thinks it is even simpler: "A small town person is neither a poor-me cousin of his metro counterpart, nor is he technologically deficient. Speak his language, and his Internet needs are the same as yours."

These needs could be anything from emailing a girlfriend to surfing for information on which mutual fund to invest in. The strategy being adopted is a two-pronged one: targeting users directly and creating other properties that will do the same. On the other hand, creating more properties also means language-enabling other sites.

Then there is e-governance. Webdunia is currently working with the Madhya Pradesh government on projects that include maintaining records and getting all transactions online, in the local language. "When I visited Ahmedabad, for instance, I saw that official transactions were happening online primarily because it was language-enabled," says Gujral.

The site's revenue model hinges on the portals, content syndication and tech syndication. It has also been working with Microsoft to offer MS Office in Indian languages. "All international releases of Microsoft are in tie-ups with the local management, except in the case of India," says Shirish Kotmire, Vice-President, Product Management.

More and more companies are beginning to realise that if they want to make it big in India, they will need to do it in the local languages. Webdunia has the means. Already it boasts multilingual e-greetings at yahoo! India, email at rediff, language content at satyam and indya, and a Hindi language Web site put up for Amul. With the opening of new markets, Kotmire says they can now give companies actual access to new users. From then on, the companies help them with further enabling.

However, he adds, "Right now, our solutions are customized. We want to 'productise' them. The idea is to create standard products that you can buy off the shelf and integrate in your site."

Whatever the strategy, webdunia must be doing something right. Surfers writing in from around the world vouch for that. There's Atul Dodhia who suggests the editors should add a 'learn Hindi' section for his kids. Meena Gupta sends in a reminder about the holy month of Shravan so someone can write about it, while Rishabh Kumar thanks the team profusely for its page on his home city, Indore.

The people at webdunia read all messages and smile. And with very good reason, too.