Ashish Kashyap justifies MIH’s strategy of doling out Rs. 1.5 crores with a rather flimsy “blogs in India needed some evangelizing” reasoning [via Agencyfaqs] Blogs have been thriving in India - livejournal, rediffblogs and blogger - for quite some time now, and I think so far, bloggers have been a rather incestuous community in India, driven by mutual back-slapping and sometimes, by mainstream media coverage. If anything, MIH has ended up evangelizing copying of content by making it a mercenary activity - here’s one sample (via Pranav). Kashyap claims that the company is adding around 1000 bloggers a month, and has a monitoring mechanism to verify authenticity of content.

The company is working on contextual search, and plans to add five to seven search verticals, including local search down to the area level in a city. Well, one doesn’t really know what will work in India, so on the positive side, ibibo is experimenting with sites, and is open to some not doing well. However, haven’t seen much innovation yet, so lets see where this goes. The company is looking primarily at internet acquisitions. Content Head Arunava Sinha had told ContentSutra in Jan that ibibo shall be announcing some acquisitions “very soon”, and nothing has happened so far.