Indian Startups Blog

Zapak Digital Entertainment plans to launch a host of merchandise built around the Zapak games in order to push growth. According to Zapak, its merchandise will include bags, apparel, mugs, headphones, accessories and handbands and will be priced between Rs 150 and Rs 300.

Amitabh Bachchan, who recently launched his blog on BigAdda, has said he is not being paid to blog. “This is my personal blog, why would I take money to blog on my own site! I get paid to work in movies, TV shows, commercials, not to express my personal views to the public, that too on my own platform,” Big B has said.

Zapak Digital Entertainment and Jump Games, the two gaming divisions of Reliance Entertainment, have partnered with cricketer Ishant Sharma to launch an online and a mobile game based around the cricketer.

Social networking site Ibibo.com has launched a community based concept called Baltigiri which is a take-off from Gandhigiri and the Balti Ad. According to Ibibo Web, the new concept gives Ibibo users a voice, beyond providing a platform for social interaction.

Zapak Digital Entertainment, a part of Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, is reportedly in talks with local players in Brazil, Russia and China in order to launch its online gaming portal Zapak.com in the local languages. The move is aimed at expanding Zapak’s operations into BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries.

Agencyfaqs.com, the advertising, media and marketing website, is shortening its name to Afaqs. The company has unveiled the outline of its new logo and is now inviting readers to suggest colours for the new logo.

“Our designers are already working on it,” Agencyfaqs has said, “but we thought it would be fun to see how our readers interpret the colours of our new logo.”

Google has added Hindi language to its online translation service. According to the company, Google Translate will now allow users to translate text or a web page between Hindi and English.

“Of the total literate Indian population, only about 13 per cent are English literate. Keeping this in mind, this launch is a step towards ensuring that Hindi speaking users in India can benefit from the richness of the internet, regardless of their familiarity with English language,” Google has said.

Microsoft has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo. In January 2008, Microsoft had made an unsolicited offer to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion. Yahoo later rejected the offer saying Microsoft’s bid ‘substantially undervalued’ the company. Recently, Microsoft raised its bid by about $5 billion but now it appears that Yahoo wanted Microsoft to further raise its bid by another $5 billion or more, raising the acquisition size to about $55 billion.

Scrabulous, an online word game developed by Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, may soon be available to Orkut users. The application, which boasts of three million registered users, is already running on Facebook where it has reportedly become the fifth-most popular application.

by Asfaq Tapia

“The Indian online travel industry will cater up to 10 million users by 2010”, said Dinesh Agarwal, founder of IndiaMart.com at the Online Travel Conference organised by IAMAI in Mumbai on 2nd May 2008. The conference discussed the future of online travel, consumer trends, and new marketing strategies that can be adopted in India.