Rediff.com, a leading Nasdaq-listed Internet portal, said it will acquire US-based thinkIndia.com for $3 million in cash instead of issuing upto 650,000 American Depositary Receipts as previously agreed.

The reasons for this change could not be sought as all the top officials at Rediff.com are in the US and were expected to return only tomorrow. The portal announced in October its plan to acquire privately-held thinkIndia.com and in December said it would be an all-stock purchase without specifying a time or price for the acquisition, thinkindia.com is positioned to be the local destination for Indians worldwide.

The website's city pages are a unique resource for Indians living in major metropolitan cities, providing a range of information on local Indian news, events, and business (listings for restaurants, movie theatres, grocery stores, travel agents etc).

ThinkIndia has also taken localization to another level by offering customization of content, based on where you are originally from versus broad-based, homogeneous content offered by most other Indian websites. For example, an Indian from New Delhi who lives in New York can personalize his or her viewing experience to those specific cities/regions.

Several thousand articles deep and 8 channels broad, thinkIndia's content is extensively cross-linked for navigational ease.