**OT** WorldViewer to Roll Out 50,000 Portals
By Uday Lal Pai
India Correspondent, asia.internet.com
[February 15, 2000--MUMBAI] US-based WorldViewer.com and its subsidiary WorldViewer.com India Pvt. Ltd. (WVI) are in the process of creating 50,000 independent portal sites worldwide, including over 35,000 in the US.
"Our main thrust is to create multilanguage geographical and category portals," Thomas Vellaringattu, CEO of the company, told this correspondent in an exclusive interview.
"By September this year, we intend to cover all geographical locations and categories in the US," he added.
The primary targets are small- and mid-sized cities not directly covered by major portals. WVI also plans to launch 250 India-specific portals, before turning to other geographical areas or countries on a priority basis.
Most of the work will be done in India by WVI, said Vellaringattu.
"This model in community representation takes a bottoms-up approach, and is designed to empower small businesses and communities to take part in the Net revolution as a unified force," he claimed.
By enabling B2B e-commerce, affiliate marketing and franchises, WVI hopes to create integrated online communities.
User-relevant categories will be provided for each geographical region, including information on elected government officials and their voting records, local and national news based on user-specified preferences, current events, stock quotes, weather updates, comics, and so on.
"Enabling barcode scanning for a variety of products is yet another feature of our company. Distinctive fields in our database will store zip codes, telephone area codes and UPC codes for manufacturers," said Vellaringattu.
The US company is expected to go public in 2001, and a 2.5 percent stake in the company will be allocated to the Indian subsidiary. |
