IPTouch launches zolved.com

IPTouch India Private Limited, the Indian arm of US-based IPTouch Inc, has launched Zolved.com, an online resource that assists individuals to get answers daily to technical problems endemic to today's digital lifestyle.

The company has so far invested Rs 5 crore on Zolved.com and plans to invest Rs 25 crore more in the near future.

Targeted at tapping the huge global consumer technical support market, which is pegged to be $50 billion and is growing at a fast clip of 50-60 per cent year-on-year, Zolved.com helps consumers access to expert technical resources in three ways to solve their problems via the web "� community generated content, expert gurus and local technical resources.

"This new web 2.0 service gives consumers both control and choice to keep their personal technology up and running. And, best of all, its free. The Zolved.com Beta program launched in December 2006 was hugely successful and has attracted more than 2.5 lakh consumers from over 40 countries in less than 90 days," Ratan Tipirneni, founder and CEO of IPTouch Inc, said.

On the financial viabilities of this internet platform, Tipirneni said the company had already partnered Google and was in talks with three other advertisement networks.

"Though our focus will be on advertisement networks initially, we also plan to garner substantial amounts via transmission fee for technical support a la eBay, besides white labelling our technology to other companies. We are currently in talks with around 50 companies for this purpose while 25 more companies are in the pipeline," he added.

IPTouch expects to make profitability from Zolved.com in 11 months from now and aims at building a Rs 4,000-crore company in the next five years, according to Tipirneni.