BCCL group company Indiatimes has made live two separate verticals - a womens portal called iDiva, and a B2B marketplace called, well, B2B. Both sites are still in the process of being fully launched, and are currently in beta.
– iDiva competes with two other initiatives from media companies in India - Indiwo from Web18 (disclosure - I have shares of Network18) and Women from India Today Group Online (Digital Today). What’s interesting about iDiva is that Indiatimes has gone a step further, and introduced a separate e-mail for women - iDiva Mail.
– B2B Marketplace - essentially a directory listing and marketplace, connecting buyers and sellers of Automobiles, Aviation Equipment, Chemicals, Construction, Electricals, Furniture, among several other categories. Fairly similar to other marketplaces, like Indiamart.com, TradeIndia.com and others. What surprises me is that this appears to be an Indiatimes launch, though it should ideally have been launched by Times Business Solutions, where most online classifieds businesses from the BCCL have been aggregated.
More on these sites later - I’m currently at the 3G India Forum, without WiFi, and the Reliance Data card connectivity has been rather poor for the last couple of months.
