Indiantelevision.com Team

(16 December 2006 6:00 pm)

MUMBAI: Portal MSN India has given its astrology channel a boost by forging a tie up with Astrolife. This will offer users a range of content and services.

Astrolife business head Raj Rao says, " We provide the widest range of new age services. Apart from western Astrology what we have tried to do is market vedic astrology and demystify it. There is growing interest in astrology online. The internet and astrology both allow for mass cutomisation and mass personalisation.

"The latter involves sending data to users saying how planet movement will affect them. While 500,000 experts practise astrology in India only 200 offer online services. So there is a big opportunity here to build up astrology online. The non resident Indian business is worth Rs. 250 crores annually. It is this market that we are also looking to tap through our alliance with MSN."

Astrolife has 40 astrologers on board. 50 per cent of them are exclusive. Astrolife has also launched gemstones with a 100 per cent buyback option incase the customer is not satisfied. Marriage and matrimony are the two most popular uses for astrology. Famous astrologer Marjorie Orr at the media event launched her e-book Annual Forecast 2007. She says that the internet has been a most useful avenue in terms of getting benefits astrology across to a wider audience. The net allows for different kinds of dissemination from a simple level to a complex one.

Bindra says that this alliance could serve as a launch pad for other efatures including social networking. Bindra adds that social networking will take time to evolve in India. but it will do so in a manner diffeernt from how it has done in the US. Microsoft head digital marketing revenue Rajnish says that each month MSN does marketing activities around a Bollywood film. The last film it was involved with was Dhoom 2. It hosts the film and does things like games, blogs featuring the stars writing about their experiences making the film. For cricket it recently launched a fantasy game to coincide with India's tour of South Africa.