Yahoo! India to launch cities & listings portals

Yahoo! Web Services plans to launch city-specific-information and listings portals under the brand name Yahoo! Our City and also develop a GIS portal Yahoo! India Maps that will have location details of different cities and villages in India.

The company's head of strategy Sandeepp Shrivastava said both these products - currently in the beta testing stage - are being developed primarily as part of Yahoo!'s longer term goal to make the Internet more relevant for the Indian populace. The city maps, which will aggregate both editorial and user-generated content, will offer news, information about events, weather details, entertainment, shopping and a host of other data, Shrivastava said.

Yahoo! India Maps, on the other hand is a site that will offer detailed information about places in the country, including their location, the approach roads, distances between places and also information about banks, restaurants, schools, malls.

It will help search locations according to city names, street names and landmarks. In case of villages, the information may be restricted to how one can get there. There are plans to introduce features like the shortest route to a place, he said.

While there are 170 cities, 4,785 towns and 2,20,000 villages covered under India Maps, 20 cities have been brought under Yahoo! Our City, he added. In another 12 months or so this number will reach 70, Shrivastava said.

Shrivastava said both these products have been developed by Yahoo! Bangalore team and are now ready for national launch. He said the company has tied up with Delhi-based C.E. Systems for the maps and content that has been uploaded on the site. "We want the information to be as fresh as six weeks ago...There will be improvement in this as per the demand and usage pattern observed over a period of time, Shrivastava said.

Shrivastava said there were no plans to make the maps and data access a 'paid' service. "We feel the new service will fit well into our other revenue models as it will increase the flow of visitors to Yahoo!," he said.