Bangalore, October 06, 2009: asklaila, India’s first local information service, today announced a strategic partnership with HindustanTimes.com to create a co-branded city information microsite. The microsite, available at hindustantimes.asklaila.com, allows users to search for local services and event information across 12 Indian cities.
Shriram Adukoorie, co-founder, asklaila said, “For an information services company like asklaila, distribution is the key to success and joining hands with a leader in the Indian online space like HindustanTimes.com will benefit our overall reach tremendously”.
With this partnership, asklaila extends its association with HT Media Limited to the online platform as well. It already has an existing relationship with Hindustan Times for its ‘HT City’ supplement in New Delhi, which publishes syndicated content from asklaila’s online portal.
asklaila features an industry-first forgiving search technology that takes the onus of understanding what users mean and providing relevant local information, instead of guiding them to enter keywords in specific ways. Some of the highlights of asklaila’s local information search technology include,
· Proximity search – Results include not only the searched-for locality but also the locality nearby
· Syntax-free search option – ‘Haircut Lajpat Nagar’ and ‘Lajpat Nagar Haircut’ will give the same results
· Support for uniquely Indian lexicon (ex. CCD – Café Coffee Day)
· Allows attribute-tagged search like ’24 hours pharmacy’, ‘Roof top restaurant’
HindustanTimes.com is one of India’s leading online news portals and has a slew of innovations to its credit that includes blogs, a feedback portal and a host of content-based partnerships for matrimonial, classifieds and job search among others.
About Four Interactive
www.asklaila.com is the service of Four Interactive Pvt. Ltd., headquartered in Bangalore, India. Four Interactive is focused on building easy to use services that are at the intersection of the mobile, content and the online world for Indian consumers. The company’s mission is to connect consumers with local businesses. Four Interactive is co-founded by Shriram Adukoorie, who was previously country manager for MSN South Asia, and successful serial entrepreneur Kiran Konduri, who has co-founded and managed two startups Zephyr Software and Cogniti. More information on Four Interactive is available at www.asklaila.com/aboutus.
