Jerry Yang’s Yahoo along with Jeff Bezos’s Amazon has been one of the biggest dot-com successes in the world, despite having its fair share of trials and tribulations. For Yahoo India too, it has been a topsy-turvy ride and nothing reflects it better than the three bashes it had till now in India. The launch bash in the year 2000 was a grand affair befitting the status of Yahoo, but the party in 2001 had lost much of its sheen perhaps reflective of the bad times dot-coms were going through. The bash this year in a Mumbai discotheque coinciding with the FIFA World Cup final though proved the point that Yahoo has managed to consolidate itself in India up from the ashes of the dot-com ruins.

Deepak Chandani, head, Yahoo India, proudly claims that Yahoo in India has 2.4 crore registered members, amounting to nearly 75 percent of the Internet audience in India, with more than 25,000 new registrations daily. However, this figure does have one caveat, with almost half of the number having registered with Yahoo US or other country sites, but from machines having IP addresses in India. Currently, Yahoo India’s page views are over 1 billion a month, which implies around 1.2-1.4 crore individuals coming to the site every month. Yahoo has also devised other modes to attract retail consumers, namely the exercise with over 3,000 cybercafes in the south and the west for the last 15 months. Chandani feels that with the low Internet penetration in India, it is imperative to use cybercafes to gain eyeballs.

Since last year, another reason for Yahoo’s upward fortunes is its tie-up with mobile service providers in many circles, whereby consumers can send SMS messages via Yahoo Messenger and vice-versa. This initiative, perhaps the most important from the future point of view, and the most innovative from the business standpoint, is led by Yahoo India’s business development head, Arun Gupta. In fact, Gupta is now taking this mobile initiative to other parts of the region, thus increasing Yahoo India’s importance in the global Yahoo scheme of things.

According to Chandani, India and China are two of Yahoo’s most important markets, both among its top 10 traffic registrations. Consequently, Yahoo India has three mail farms in locations in India, with the third one having come up recently. It is planning several other schemes to increase its reach in India, like starting Yahoo classifieds, where real estate is an important segment. E-commerce is also being touted as a new stream of revenue. But with this space already crowded, Yahoo plans to partner with a few strong verticals and concentrate on commerce only in those fields. Unlike competitors like Rediff or Indiatimes, Yahoo plans to remain only as a content aggregator, with over 100 partners. Even this presentation of content is being done in a selective manner at different times among selective audiences.

In terms of advertising, Yahoo India has extensively been involved in online advertising, though its offline ad forays have been more sporadic with a few catchy ads on TV being the highlight. However, the most pertinent question doing the rounds for a long time is whether Yahoo India wants to turn its mail service into a paid one. Chandani categorically states the Yahoo policy in this regard. Yahoo India only plans to make its premium services a paid service, especially targeting the corporate segment. However, the basic services targeted at retail consumers would continue to remain free. “We have seen what happened to USANet and 123India after they turned paid and have no intention of repeating the same mistake,” says Chandani.