Suveen K Sinha / New Delhi May 13, 2008, 5:02 IST |
Google has taken to India with a vengeance and built communities. The time has come monetise. |
Google is often spoken of in divine terms (haven't you heard, "Google is God"?). |
It is also spoken of in magical terms. Harvard Business Review recently said the company appears to have an infinite number of doves, rabbits, and other creatures in its hat: maps, mail, news, spreadsheets, video, alternative-energy invest-ments, and cash. |
It thus seemed fitting when Google India put a magician, a young girl called Suhani Shah, on stage at the launch of the |
Indian site of YouTube, which enables people to watch and share videos online and which Google acquired in October 2006. Shah wasn't there to do a show, but to talk of how YouTube has given people across the world a glimpse of what she does and many of those people have bought her shows. |
She was one of five business partners on display. NDTV was another; it is using YouTube videos extensively in a new show. Vikram Chandra, the chief executive officer of NDTV Networks, is also using YouTube for personal benefit. He has found tutorials on the site that ?he hopes ?will teach him to play the guitar. |
The Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, has put 1,600 lectures on the site, which will rise to 6,000 by the end of the year. Rajshri Media, the new economy arm of the film production company that made Maine Pyar Kiya and Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, has made a 90-episode remixed version of Akbar-Birbal tales, which it will put on YouTube. |
Leena Nandan, joint secretary in the Union tourism ministry, says the ministry was the first government agency in the world to use YouTube for its Incredible India campaign. |
At present, YouTube is in talks with a non-government organisation that is making videos of school teachers teaching in the schools of Uttar Pradesh's villages, which will be shown in villages that do not have schools. |
Get the picture? This is Indianisation of YouTube, which, in the best tradition of startups, was born in a garage in San Bruno, USA, in 2005. Tall and svelte Sakina Arsiwala, an alumnus of Bombay University who heads all of YouTube's international efforts, says the Indian site will customise content for Indian viewers as well as showcase Indian content for the world. |
Seconds, Google India managing director Shailesh Rao: "It's a service for the world. There is tremendous interest in Indian content. This is really the beginning of a process to build a community." |
