Anurag Dod and Gaurav Mishra of Guruji, India’s First Local Search Engine
By kamla bhatt • Jan 24th, 2008Category: Bangalore, Business & Tech, Diaspora, Featured, Ideas, India, Internet & Telecom
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Guruji is India’s first local search engine. Guruji is India’s Google point out co-co-founders Anurag Dod and Gaurav Mishra. I caught up with Anurag and Gaurav earlier this month at their new office in Koramangala, Bangalore. The purpose of the interview was to do a follow-up from last year’s interview and find out how they plan to scale and grow Guruji, especially since the local search space in India has suddenly become crowded and has lots of players.
In the year since I last met them Guruji has grown in size, has rolled out its local search in different parts of the country and in different languages and they have clearly recognized the importance of the holy trinity of Indian content: Astrology, Bollywood and Cricket. They seem to have done a lot of work on bollywood and cricket in comparison to their astrology offerings.
What kinds of innovation has the Guruji team introduced in the local search space in India? What is their mobile strategy? Are they looking for a second round of funding? What are the challenges of running a startup in India are some of the questions we ask Anurag and Gaurav.
Tune back in for Part-2 of the conversation where Anurag and Gaurav talk about entrepreneurship and doing business in India.
Kamla Bhatt is the host and producer of an Internet Radio show where listeners can find stories about the new and emerging India and the global Indian community. As a pioneer of 'internet radio' format in India Kamla started her first show News about India, followed by TalkNewsIndia in 2005. In 2006 she premiered her new show: The Kamla Bhatt Show: Life, People and Ideas. 
I searched for “newspaper”, as they sampled in the interview, in guruji and google.co.in… Guruji 2nd result is “Britain’s No1 paper”. Google seems more relevant at least in this case.
I am not saying nor believe Google is god and I completely agree that google misses the “context”. However, Guruji has a way to go before the context is well set.
- Rajiv
Rajiv, your example is silly. If you search for a generic, then you should be prepared for a generic. Show us an example search of a locally relevant search.