ByIndia.com, a search engine in India has planned to launch a “Google AdWords-Like” system in the middle of this month. On their Advertising web page, they stated this program be supposed to start-off in January this year, but somehow they have delayed to the 15th of this month. ByIndia, owned by Web2 Corp, seemed to be very optimistic about this incoming program, “We will be able to gain significant market share in India quickly, because we’re the first serious contender in their social media market. This is crucial both for ByIndia and for advertisers because early movers will have the opportunity to get a large share of the average Indian web user’s mindshare quickly and at a tiny fraction of the price of advertising in more developed markets. Ads.ByIndia.com is looking to get more than just Indian advertisers, though, and will accept payment in INR rupees, GBR Pounds, US Dollars, and Canadian dollars.” According to this article.

On the ByIndia home page, you’ll notice that they have stated so far they have able to search 21,164,863 pages, and much of them related to the Indians’ favorite hobby and lifestyle such as Bollywood, cricket, local news, and etc. As I compare their search engine with another one in India, i.e. guruji.com, with the keyword “Shah Rukh Khan“, a famous actor in India, ByIndia returned 379 total matching pages whereas guruji returned 72,533 pages. Therefore, I believe that guruji, funded by Sequoia Capital India is a much better search engine in terms of contents in India.

No doubt technology has enabled people to make more productive and profitable use of the resources nowadays. As an Asian, I saw many examples of the extreme contrast between the rich and the poor, I’m interesting to know how an Advertising program/search engine will help the small businesses in India to reach the outside world, and thus, bridge the gap between the rich and the poor. The Advertising program should served as one of the tools to meet the aforesaid purpose. However, the details of ByIndia Advertising program is still unknown to the public at this moment.