Guruji.com, a crawler-based local search engine, sifts through India-related data and gives specific local content to the reader.
“At present we have about 20 million documents and it is growing 10 times each year,” says Anurag Dad, CEO and co-founder, Guruji.
“We have to be careful about spam search too. For this, we check 50 parameters before indexing a page,” says Gaurav Mishra, COO and co-founder, Guruji.
Another differentiator available on this search engine is that it has separate options for web and city search. This can help get more city-specific result — such as movie timings and phone numbers, restraurants etc. For the city search, Guruji has tie-ups with Infomedia and yellow pages for more specific content.
An interesting option on the site is the ‘Submit your site’ link. Businesses can submit their company’s url for indexing and when a query comes up, users with those web search results will also get the business listing.
“This gives results similar to the local yellow pages search,” Mr Dad explains.
“We get about 10 million searches a day with most of them focussed on entertainment. Others are about general information and travel plans. In the coming few months, we plan to give additional search options apart from movies and food joints,” adds Mr Dad.
The search is also available in regional languages such as Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada platforms. By next year, the company plans to develop platforms for all Indian languages.
Guruji plans to host online ads in the future.
“We might use the pay-per-click model that is Rs 5-7 for each click in the future,” says Mr Dad. Guruji's database is still young, so comparisons with Google/Yahoo at the moment is not justified. But a local Indian content search is quite a relevant search option.
As a back-up plan, Guruji hopes for venture funding from Sequoia Capital — one of the earliest investors in Google.
Magic mirror
The next time you go to Shoppers’ Top or Westside, you might just see a ‘magic mirror’, that will help you make quick decisions in buying an outfit that suits you.
The number of clothes in a trial room is restricted, making selection a difficult task. If you do not get the right size or colour, chances are that you might not buy it after all the effort.
The magic mirror is an LCD screen, powered by Infosys RFID solution. Placed on the wall, the mirror is fit with RFID readers, while clothes have the RFID tags. Customers can request for different products while in the trial room itself. After selecting the desired size, colour or a matching shirt, all that one has to do is hit the ‘OK’ button. This will generate a request in the handheld device of a sales person on the floor, who will then bring along the requested item.
“People give-up buying the desired clothes and for retailers this results in an opportunity cost of $2 billion per year,” says Girish Ramachandra, Head of Solutions Development in RFID Solutions Practice, Infosys.
“Our solution is being implemented in large stores in the US and we might see them in India soon,” he adds.
Infosys is also using the RFID technology to develop solutions for the cosmetics industry too.
“While trying on a lipstick you can virtually see how it looks. And you can also check out a matching lip liner by just punching in the colour desired,” explains Mr Ramachandra. Pilots for the cosmetic products are on in five stores for a particular brand in the US, he adds.
