Sabeer Bhatia, KPIT Cummins in R&D pact

Creating waves with his contextual blogging tool Blogeverywhere.com, Sabeer Bhatia of Hotmail fame announced his long-term partnership to build the next generation products for the internet with Pune-based KPIT Cummins Infosystems.

The site which was unveiled earlier this week in Delhi "has seen 8,000 downloads in the first five days, eight times more than Hotmail in its first week," said Bhatia.

Over the last two years a team of 50 people at KPIT Cummins worked on Blogeverywhere.com along with Bhatia and two other colleagues in the US.

Crediting KPIT Cummins with the design, concept, prototying, launch, support and future development of Blogeverywhere.com, Bhatia said: "Henceforth KPIT Cummins will be our strategic partner for building more advanced technology products in the next 2-3 years, which would change the way people use the internet today."

While the project had put in place a strong foundation for future collaborations for KPIT Cummins with Bhatia, "The company is also an equity holder in the project," said Ravi Pandit, chairman and group CEO, KPIT Cummins. The tool among its many features had a feature to enhance the net experience to a "broadband like" for dial-up users checking mail.