Indian Internet portal plans big US push
Business Times Singapore Online, May 13, 1999

It also sets its sights on 20m Indians in Europe, Africa, Asia

INDIA'S leading Internet portal company, Rediff, has unveiled plans for a big push into the US, with the launch of a sophisticated new portal site for expatriate Indians.

Rediff hopes to capture the ethnic Indian market of 1.2 million mostly wealthy and technology-friendly people, including many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. It is also setting its sights on the 20 million Indians living abroad in Europe, Africa and Asia.

The launch marks a new challenge to the leading US portal sites, which have themselves begun to expand aggressively overseas. "US portals have succeeded in cutting across users the world over by introducing localised versions of their services," said Ajit Balakrishnan, founder and chairman of Rediff. "Rediff.com aims to do the same out of India."

The US venture also signals the emergence of a second generation of Indian technology companies. While most existing companies are software service providers, the new generation are mainly Web-based businesses.

About 60 per cent of Indian Americans are online, and Indian nationals account for the largest number of programmers in the technology industry on short-term visas.

Rediff, backed by international venture capital from Draper, Warburg Pincus and Intel, has constructed a full-service US version of its existing portal, which, with 80 million hits a month, is India's most popular.