(by Preethi J & Nikhil Pahwa) AskLaila.com has launched a call center based local business search service to enable its users find local information on movies or addresses of businesses. The service has, at present, only been launched for Bangalore, the company's home base. Speaking to MediaNama earlier today, Asklaila co-founder Shriram Adukoorie told us that Bangalore is their first launch, and they'll expand to other cities subsequently. The monetzsation of the voice services is expected to begin in around 3 months. Adukoorie said that their business model is primarily around providing local advertisers with lead generation and 'presence advertising'. For the mobile, the company has so far only launched leads. They also monetise on SMS through providing consumers with leads. AskLaila has so far raised around $12 million, but Adukoorie declined to comment on revenues, or even whether the company has broken even on not. Money raised has been spent on technology, data collection, expanding the sales force. Adukoorie says that the technology costs are high. The most amount of traffic it gets is from Bombay, Delhi and Bangalore, while most of the revenue comes from Bombay and Delhi, followed by the Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad combine. "Our business revolves around offering small advertisers lots of choices, primarily because they're small and can't afford to put an ad in a newspaper or a radio channel, which you can't target as well. The access mode doesn't make much of an impact to them - they're okay if its from voice or the Internet," Adukoorie…
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