LOUNGE WEB L7 TECH 2010 SATURDAY, MAY 29, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM
The creators of the first Indian language websites braved rudimentary technology and digital nation limited reach to become dotcom pioneers. We trace the stories of four of them
SHARP IMAGE kuvempu com
or 37-year-old Gyanesh M. Khanolkar, Fbeing the creator of the world’s first Kannada .com was only partly sparked by the thrill of the new. In 1997, the Bangalore- based software engineer registered Kuvempu.com, an online resource for the work of the celebrated Kannada writer and Part of history: Kerala’s 110yearold news poet, Kuppali Venkataiah Gowda Puttappa. paper was the first to go online. “The Internet was coming up then, so I started collecting information, and talking to people who could contribute,” he says. But driving Khanolkar’s exploratory spirit deepika com was another, equally central concern: “He’s also my wife’s grandfather.” Khanolkar and his wife, Eshanye Kup- emember the joke about Neil Arm- palli Poornachandra Tejaswi, had access Rstrong finding a Malayali tea vendor to a vast number of rare documents from when he landed on the moon? It was with the poet’s life. Nearly a year’s worth of this peripatetic Keralite in mind that in research went into the first iteration of 1997, in the early days of the dot-com in the site, which had content in both India, a 110-year-old newspaper decided Early bird: M. Anto Peter’s Tamilcinema.com was once mistaken for a film project. English and Kannada. to register its website www.deepika.com. Khanolkar had to sidestep a number of The idea was that no matter where you teething technology issues. “Unicode (the were, you could stay updated with all that standard method for computer represen- was happening in Kerala. tamilcinema com maayboli com tation of most of the world’s languages) Today, www.deepika.com was not prevalent yet, and browsers were has three million hits a very primitive with the way they handled day, with people logging in hen M. Anto Peter registered the wish I could say I had this grand fonts,” he says. In January 1998, the first to check live news broad- Wworld’s first Tamil .com portal, Ivision,” says 44-year old Ajay Gallewale build of a Kannada transliteration soft- casts and connect on there were exactly 257 Internet connec- when you ask him how the world’s first ware called Baraha was released. The e-kathu, a provision that tions in Chennai. “I had to start some- Devanagari .com domain was started. project was a free piece of allows you to communicate thing most of them would want to read “But I am not a smart, visionary kind of software dedicated to online in Malayalam. online,” says the 43-year-old director of a person, just an ordinary husband playing another Kannada literary The site used a Malaya- Chennai animation training institute. He a practical joke.” figure, the novelist A.N. lam font called, in typical didn’t have to think for long. Everyone, In 1996, Gallewale, a software engineer, Krishna Rao (popularly bureaucratic sobriety, ML- he reasoned soon enough, would be and his wife Bhavana were known as Anakru among TTKarthika. Developed by interested in Tamil film news. new immigrants to the US. Kannadigas). Khanolkar used the Centre for Development The year was 1997, and Peter’s timing “My wife wanted me to Baraha for the Kannada parts of Advanced Computing was perfect—Mani Ratnam’s Iruvar and build a ‘home’,” he says. of the site, but it was a “non- (C-DAC), Pune, the font Rajinikanth-starrer Arunachalam would “Like any new immigrant, standard tool” that needed to was later worked on by release within months of each other. we didn’t have money. So I be downloaded and installed. C-DAC’s Thiruvanan- Within three years, the site would be gen- said I will build you a ‘home While he doesn’t have statis- thapuram branch, a erating hits in the thousands, and now page’ instead.” That home tics on the site’s traffic, remarkably productive cen- attracts 150,000 visitors a day, with 45% of page was the Marathi site Khanolkar says he receives tre that went on to work the traffic coming from Sri Lanka, Canada Maayboli.com, started on 16 fan mail “on a weekly basis”. these basic fonts into a and the US. “We were the only online por- September 1996. Maayboli “It’s frequently visited, and malayalam suite of Malayalam software tal that wasn’t connected to a print publi- was a “website” in the truest the content is often linked to applications, including a cation, and yet we’re the most successful,” form—an “all-of-the-above” or reused elsewhere.” text-to-speech engine called he says. Peter is a bit of a maverick of the repository with a directory In 2001, Khanolkar decided Subhashini, and a tool to Tamil Web—his company Softview Ltd of links, original content to try his hand at something teach Malayalam to “Keralites brings out books in Tamil with titles such and a place for the Marathi more ambitious. “We wanted abroad”, called Ezhuthachan. as 24 Maninerattil Internet-Email (Learn diaspora to communicate. to build a site very similar to There were still plenty of early difficul- Internet and Email in 24 hours). “It seems now like they Amazon.com, but for Kan- ties. “Some browsers did not support (a) A few days before the launch of the site, were waiting for something kannada nada books.” The project, few characters and those were missing, Peter called a press conference in Chennai like that to happen,” he Udayaravi.com, created a lot of local inter- which had to be resolved with a worka- in association with the Tamil Film Produc- says. “‘If you build they will est—Khanolkar worked with a group of round. Special instructions had to be ers Council. “The press had no idea what a come’ became true, and it
students of the Indian Institute of Man- given for Linux and Mac users,” says website was, so I had to bring out a book- devanagari just grew without we doing agement, Bangalore, to research how to Rojan Abraham, the site’s current editor. let titled How to Watch Tamilcinema.com,” any advertising.” Being a integrate local publishers to the site, and Even in the early days, the site did not he says. The assembled journalists still Marathi NRI helped, as mar- the local press gave the project a lot of have a problem generating revenue weren’t completely sure what was being keting came naturally. For attention. The site covered about 25-30 through advertisements. A large chunk of launched. Playing safe, one of the Tamil Ajay, it also bought back mem- publishers, and offered 25,000 books for non-resident Indians (NRIs) from Kerala, papers called it “an upcoming film called ories of editing the Indian Insti- sale. “People could go to cyber cafés and especially those who work in the Arab Tamilcinema.com”. tute of Technology, Mumbai’s Mara- pay either by VPP or cheque,” he says. countries, visit India frequently and invest The first version of the site passes for a thi periodical Tantra as a student. “We were very rustic that way.” But the and shop extensively in Kerala. Online case study of the 1990s school of Web The major turning point came in 2001. site was closed down before sales could was a medium perfectly poised to target design. The top banner is in bright green, “I lost my job in the recession and commence. “We were unable to maintain these people and www.deepika.com’s followed by the Tamil Cinema logo framed decided to close the site down as I was not it, and we were trying to do other things in advertisers were quick to see that. “Real between two thin rainbow-coloured lines. sure I could afford it any more,” he says. our business,” he says. “We were unable estate, banking, education and online There’s a spinning “Send By that time, Maayboli had a community to give it the attention it needed to grow.” shopping are the largest categories of our email” logo at the bottom of nearly 20,000 users. When he made the Kuvempu.com, however, is still going advertisers now,” Abraham says. and a hits counter—a feature announcement, they raised $4,000 (around strong. “We’re scaling it up,” Khanolkar Readers from 180 countries log in to of the site Peter refuses to Rs1.9 lakh) through the online payment says. “We’re launching a site for the work www.deepika.com for all Kerala-related part with to this day. “I know service Paypal in less than 3 hours. Ajay of author Poornachandra Tejaswi as well.” requirements, including finding a bride it’s an old-fashioned thing, received “several emails” asking him to For him, it’s an old, familiar drive. “He’s or a groom from a list that covers about but I see it as an indispens- reconsider. “That is when I realized this is my father-in-law.” 20 countries. able part of the site,” he says. something bigger than a website,” he says. The site’s current itera- Maayboli survived, and Ajay redesigned Krish Raghav Veena Venugopal tion retains many of the the site around new revenue-generation
[email protected] WWW.ANDHRAJYOTI.COM WWW.MANGALAM.COM WWW.AMARDESHONLINE.COMWWW.DINAMALAR.COM WWW.GANDHADAGUDI.COM WWW.GUJARATSAMACHAR.COMWWW.LOKSATTA.COM WWW.AMARIODISHA.COM WWW.AJITWEEKLY.COM WWW.DINAMALAR.COM WWW.GUJARATS [email protected] visual flourishes of the era outlets, including an online shop. In 2005, HEMANT MISHRA/MINT (such as scrolling marquees while studying management at Harvard of text), with more modern (“one of my personal lifetime dreams”), he Web elements—Flash video submitted Maayboli as a business case and RSS feeds. “I’m a pure study in one of his classes. The professor
tamil technical man,” he says. “I urged him not to shut the site down, and try to keep the site as up-to-date as pos- in February 2007 it became a registered sible—whenever something new comes company. The site now attracts 140,000 along on the Web, I get my engineers to visitors daily. Ajay remembers his profes- incorporate it into the site.” sor’s advice: “If your dream is successful, Updated thrice daily, Tamilcinema is a you will be a catalyst for others to dream straightforward news and gossip site for and be successful on the Net.” Tamil films, and features most of the usual distractions of a film website—reviews, Krish Raghav
slide shows and lots of wallpapers. “I try COURTESY AJAY GALLEWALE and stick by a simple rule—the site has to be family-friendly. No pornography or ‘low-class’ content and no ‘third-rate’ pho- tographs,” he says. The site stays afloat on ad revenue, and Softview Ltd is sometimes contracted to develop portals for other organizations. “We need to develop the regional Web with the latest technology,” Peter says.
W.IAAA.O W.UAASMCA.OWWLKAT.O WWW.ANDHRAJYOTI.COMWWW.DINAMALAR.COM WWW.MANGALAM.COM WWW.GUJARATSAMACHAR.COMWWW.LOKSATTA.COM WWW.AMARDESHONLINE.COM WWW.GANDHADAGUDI.COM WWW.AMARIODISHA.COM WWW.AJITWEEKLY.COM WWW.ANDHRAJYOTI.COM WWW.DINAMALAR.COM WWW.MANGAL WWW.GUJARATSAMACHAR.COMWWW.LOKSATTA.COM “Obsolescence is our major problem,
because the Internet moves so fast.” WWW.DINAMALAR.COM WWW.GUJARATSAMACHAR.COMWWW.LOKSATTA.COM WWW.ANDHRAJYOTI.COM WWW.MANGALAM.COM WWW.AMARDESHONLINE.COM WWW.GANDHADAGUDI.COM WWW.AJITWEEKLY.COM WWW.AMARIODISHA.COM WWW.DINAMALAR.COM WWW.GUJA Pioneers: Gyanesh Khanolkar (left) and Eshanye Tejaswi started Kuvempu.com. WWW.DINAMALAR.COM WWW.GUJARATSAMACHAR.COMWWW.LOKSATTA.COM WWW.ANDHRAJYOTI.COM WWW.MANGALAM.COM WWW.AMARDESHONLINE.COM WWW.GANDHADAGUDI.COMKrish WWW.AJITWEEKLY.COM WWW.AMARIODISHA.COM WWW.DINAMALAR.COM WWW.GUJARATSAMACHAR.COMWWW.LOKSATTA.COM WWW.ANDHRAJYOTI.COMWW.LOKSATTA.COM Raghav Two’s company: Ajay with his wife Bhavana.