India Web Review - Internet Landscape in India

Shiksha.com, India's most comprehensive education portal?

2008-08-01T22:15:00.000-07:00

There have been several websites/ portals in the past that have attempted to be the one-stop resource on education in India, but most have invariably fallen short in terms of depth and breadth of content and features/ functionality.

Now there's Shiksha.com which, at least from a preliminary review of the site, does seem to be the most comprehensive site in India focused on education. Still in beta, the site has a majority of the elements that should make it a useful and popular resource amongst students: information on almost 70,000 colleges, courses, scholarships; ability to form and maintain college groups; Q&A, allowing students to ask questions and receive "expert" answers on all topics related to education/ careers; and expert articles.

Educational institutions should find the site to not only be a good platform to get visibility for their courses but should also find the e-mail and SMS push from the site to be particularly valuable. For instance, if a student is interested in a particular course, the student can choose to get an e-mail and a SMS giving details of the course. While the e-mail takes the user back to the same page showing the course information on Shiksha.com and can best serve as an easy access point to the course page, the SMS is more valuable as it gives the contact details for the recipient to get in touch with institution. Thus, the course provider could be getting leads/ inquiries for their programs.

Value of the name
Shiksha.com also has the advantage of getting a name that is bound to capture everybody's imagination quickly. The site is from the Info Edge stable, the company best known for India's top jobs portal, naukri.com. Just like the latter, the name Shiksha.com could itself contribute to a headstart over the competition.

What the site could do with
There are still some bugs and chinks-- an educational services provider we work with had difficulty listing their one-year post-graduate program on the site. Hopefully, these will be ironed out sooner rather than later.

A feature that we believe will be useful and which we did not find on the site at this point is the ability to rate and review colleges or courses. Not sure whether this is already on the product development agenda or if it is a conscious business decision to avoid this feature (after all, part of the revenue stream would be from colleges advertising on the site).

Web site monetization
From our review of the website, it looks like that there are two revenue streams at this point: a) Fees from educational institutions to get additional visibility and more features/ functions [the gold & silver package options, pricing for which are not listed on the site]. b) passive advertising, using the Google AdSense program. As the community grows, we are sure to see a lot more rich media display advertising on the site.

Taxsmile.com bags best website for online tax filing in India

2008-06-26T21:57:00.000-07:00

Taxsmile.com, a tax management service launched in 2007, has been chosen as the best website in India for online tax filing at the PCWorld Web Awards 2008. Taxsmile.com came out tops for both design & use of technology.

According to the announcement by PCWorld on their website,
It (Taxsmile.com) is one of the most well designed sites that offers a straightforward structure and easy-on-the-eye interface that helps to drive away those tax blues. It categorizes viewers into four distinct categories — individuals, corporate, tax professionals and NRIs — presenting each one with a dedicated section that cater to all their tax filling needs.

Filing of tax returns online is a relatively new concept in India which has taken off in just the last couple of years. Taxsmile.com is one of the early movers in this space and is growing its user base rapidly. Taxsmile.com is now a part of 3i Infotech after the latter acquired a significant stake in the company.

Besides helping users file income tax return online, Taxsmile.com also helps with tax planning, PAN Card Application and obtaining Digital Signatures.

Disclosure: On Target provides a range of online marketing services to Taxsmile.com

IndiaWebReview.com welcomes you!

2008-06-09T18:08:00.000-07:00

Welcome! The Internet landscape in India is promising, to say the least. With the number of Internet users growing in leaps and bounds and new websites and businesses launching everyday to reach this growing populace, we felt it is time to have a niche blog that talks about what is happening in this exciting area. We will report on new and/or interesting India-related websites we find, look at the features, functionality and content they offer, get an idea of their business model and understand their short term and long-term plans.

In doing so, we hope to fulfill four objectives: a) help the end user find interesting and useful websites b)provide the owners/ publishers of these web properties another channel to get visibility and c)spread the word about what is happening in the world of Internet in India, whether it is in the consumer or business-to-business space d) help international marketers looking to market their products or servies in India with some pointers to identifying prospective avenues for their marketing efforts.

We look forward to making this blog a valuable guide to India-specific or made-in-india web sites & web businesses.