Indian Portal Site

The Internet boom in India brought about an exponential rise

in the number of dotcom startups. Every other day we had somebody or the other

setting up a Web portal. This was the in- thing till early this year. The

initial frenzy has died down now, and it’s time for users to rate their

favorite sites.

In the dotcom business, the basic service structure required

by a company remains more or less the same. Therefore, what makes the difference

in the long run is the quality of content and how deep your pockets are for

advertising. The other important factor is uniqueness of content.

We saw two big names dominating the Indian portal scene, with

equal points on the UPI. One of these is, one of the oldest players in the

dotcom business, Rediff.com. The other is 123india. com. Both portals came out

as the preferred choice of both corporate and household users. More surprising

was the result for the runner up, Indya.com, which is a very recent startup, but

was just six points behind the two winners. The way it has grown in popularity

in such a short time, it would be interesting to see how long it can sustain the

momentum. Other players in the portals market were india info.com and

indiatimes.com.

The portal is similar to the service industry, in that you have to keep your

readers happy with quality content. Being on the Internet, its growth potential

is very high as everybody across the world can access your service. However,

this also poses a problem. You have to continue keeping your customers happy

with the best quality if you want to retain them. There are too many portals out

there to which your readers can switch to if they’re not satisfied with the

current



one.