If we go back to what Yahoo! India did with the Close-Up re-launch recently, the whole homepage was branded red with it. Don't you agree with the fact that the mother brand is sacrosanct?
I'd say you are very traditional. I'll give you an example of when indya.com was re-launched; they did a wrap around with Times of India. Also this Close Up stuff could have been even better if it was user initiated. Like we could have done the innovation on the Yahoo! India page and then when a user visits it, he would have a choice of whether to turn it red or not. So in such a case one can still keep the homepage sacrosanct.

What had happened on the first day of the Close Up ad on Yahoo! India, that the whole page was red when you go to the homepage. When it came in subsequently, it was the other way round. And secondly, we frequency gapped it. So if a particular user comes to the homepage on a day, and logged on again, it would not be there. The idea was to restrict the number of times the user would see it. We have the technology to do it, so we utilised it.

What benefits does the Internet offer as compared to other media?
I think it brings about one-to-one direct communication and it allows the brand to play a much larger role in the mind of the users. It provides a platform for the brand to actually communicate with the users and let the user feel the brand.

If one logs on to pepsizone.yahoo.co.in, one will almost feel that they have landed in Pepsi land. The print or any other medium of communication will not be able to do since they are passive, while the Internet is an interactive medium. Recently, we have added multimedia to the Pepsi zone on Yahoo!, wherein one can see a commercial as many times that he wants.

So I think interactivity and one-to-one communication is what the Internet offers. It also allows the marketer to get the product that much more closer and straight into the homes of the consumer via the Internet.

How does one monitor advertising done on the Internet? That is a constant worry marketers have had, which is why they have been reluctant to put in real money on the Internet. Is there anything being done, or any neutral system being put into place for tracking the actual effectiveness and reach of Internet advertising?
Internationally there is a system and as far as Yahoo! is concerned we have an online monitoring system. Once someone becomes an advertiser with us, within 48 hours of the campaign going online, we give them all online statistics for their ad campaign.

For example: How many times was the innovation seen, the number of people who clicked on it. So the click rates actually tell us how good the communication has been.

But at the end of the day, whether the consumer buys the product advertised or not solely depends on how good the product is and the Internet companies are not responsible for that. Our job is to bring the customer to the brand. I think every subsequent medium after print has been able to do a lot more. Print allows the user to see it, television, though passive in nature, allows the user some movement and Internet allows the user to actually communicate.

We are still a media company and are no different from the print or the television media. In both these cases the idea is to evoke a response. So here also we are hoping to evoke a response but the interactivity in the case of the Internet can go a long way.

What goes behind marketing a Dot Com in the industry?
Big question. I think we have been lucky because we are an international brand. Yahoo! India has been the number one website as far as Internet advertising and the major traffic sites in four metros - Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi are concerned. It only reflects that our brand is very strong. So obviously marketing is an important fact and more so for those which are not the leading brands. There is a lot of effort. One also needs to look at trade, offline, outdoor.

In Yahoo!, we first look at our audience online because we have an online community so we try to market our products online. Then the next step is to look offline.

What is the business model of a Dot Com in India? How different is it from the international business model?
The Indian Dot Com model is very different from the international one. I think Dot Coms have now realised (like in the case of Yahoo!) that Internet can be a very powerful medium and a very positive business model if the medium is used to offer effective services. That is what everyone in this industry is trying to leverage. Yahoo! right now looks at advertising as an important factor; in fact advertising will always be an important factor because where there are users there will be advertisers.

We also provide mobile downloadable content services to the users. So the business model of a Dot Com differs from website to website, but largely I have noticed that providing effective service over the Internet is an important thing. And if you can do that you can charge the customer.

Yahoo Europe recently acquired the price-comparison Web site Kelkoo. What is Yahoo's business plan in India?
I'll make our stand pretty clear, we have been in India since the last four years and we've always looked at opportunities as to how we can grow the market and get into new business. So obviously, commerce is an area which we are looking at.

I feel that the threshold for the total number of users needs to be 100 million for any business model to succeed. The fact that we are in this market shows that this market is potentially big for us. Our growth in terms of users and in terms of how marketers view Yahoo! in India is very positive. So we will obviously evaluate opportunities related to commerce as we go ahead.

But the biggest factor still remains that there has to be a threshold level of users. Buying over the Internet in India as of now is on the basis of cash on delivery. We would like to indulge in a truly online model. There are a lot of governmental regulations which also needs to be cleared before anything is done. So yes, we are looking at such things but at the right time and the right opportunity.

Apart from Yahoo! India's alliance with Naukri.com for Yahoo! India Careers, what are the other alliances you'll are looking at?
We have two such alliances. Last year we did a tie up with Shaadi.com to power Yahoo! Matrimony and this year we did one with Naukri.com to power Yahoo! India Careers. We will continue to work with leading verticals as we go along because at the end of the day, it is very important to offer core services to our users. So we will work with others but only the best in the business. We won't work with anyone and everyone.

Why did Yahoo! offer 100 MB mail account right after Google announced the free 1 GB Gmail account? Was it a panic response?
Every journalist has an immediate link of our move to that of Google. But I don't think it is like that. We have been around since 1997 and one of our core properties has been mail. We have acquired customers over this platform and have invested in this platform. So obviously over a period of time we need to make our product better and one of our agendas has been to make it consumer centric. We will have services which will put us apart from any competitors. We welcome competition and have never said no to competition. We have Hotmail etc as our chief competitors but if one differentiates the services, I believe that Yahoo! mail is today one of the best services in terms of offering mail across the board.

I say that not just because of the 100 MB, because storage has now become a non issue. Over a period of time it is going to be the number of services that I can offer. How do I protect a user from getting spam? How do I allow a user facilities where he can search previous mails faster? How do I empower a user to create disposable email ids?

We are going to work on improving our services and make it more consumers centric. And these will separate the big boys from the other mail services. So these 1 GB, 2 GB, 3 GB is soon going to become a non issue.

Yahoo! India is increasing mail storage capacity and a host of other new services from September. Why wasn't this done in India along with the rest of the world?
It was not done in three countries - India, China and Taiwan, largely because the number of consumers in these three markets is very high and we need to upgrade our infrastructure appropriately.

All other markets operate out of the US and are centrally controlled from there so it was easy to carry this out in those places. These three markets have their own infrastructure and in India we have our infrastructure with VSNL. So we buy only certain types of hardware which are important and it takes at least 45 days to put them in place and hook them up etc. So once that gets completed we will roll it out. It will take about 45 - 60 days, so around September it should be in place.

How are the portals managing the huge size of the email IDs? Is it a way of getting subscribers hooked on to the service initially and then wake up to a shock of having to pay for the same service some months down the line? And suppose one portal does that, others will obviously follow suit. Comment.
I think it is going to differ from portal to portal because it is directly related to the business opportunity that each portal scopes for itself.

But one thing is there, that if one portal does such a thing, the others will follow suit. Isn't that the general trend in this competitive market?
I think it depends completely on where that portal is going to make money from. I personally don't think mails will become a paid service because there is not going to be a penchant to do that.

What is going to be Yahoo! India's core focus this year?
Yahoo! India will continue to build the communication properties which includes mail, messenger, mobile, games, movies, entertainment, also online advertising because we believe we play a big role in that. Apart from that, towards the end we will look at commerce.

How similar or different are the Indian and the Chinese online markets?
I think mobile penetration is the common factor between the two as it is growing in both the markets. I think it is just the penetration that is different because more people can afford to buy a lot more things there than here. Mobile is the complete proof. The penetration of mobile in China would be somewhere around 200 million subscribers as compared to India's 37 million subscribers. So therein lies the difference. Also the penetration of Internet is very high in China when compared to India.

Yes, the opportunity in both the markets is huge but the infrastructure vis-à-vis China and India - they are poles apart. Unfortunately we lack infrastructure.

While everyone believes that the future is the Internet, it is still a long haul to where people start putting their money where their mouth is as it were. Do you think there will be a trigger that will change this and if so what is it?
I think the fact that eBay has bought Baazee.com is a good enough sign that the market is here to stay and it is here for the long haul. So I think it is a good time to be in this business.

But it is wireless telephony that is getting everyone excited at the moment...
Of course mobile and wireless telephony is growing, but so is the Internet. But there is nothing wrong if two things grow simultaneously. I don't see why they both can't grow together and moreover they are interdependent on each other to an extent.