Inside Guruji's Cove

Guruji.com wishes all its users a Very Happy and Prosperous 2007

The year 2006 saw the Indian cricket team winning its first ever Test match on the South African soil, the city of Bangalore got a new name – Bengalooru. Abhishek and Aishwarya got linked up, the Indian Parliament discussed Cricket, Man landed on the planet Mars (Alright, this one is a joke :-)) …… and amidst all this we managed to launch ourselves too - Guruji.com, the Indian Search Engine was launched on the 12th of October 2006.

We can hardly stop thanking you for all the support displayed, and we promise to deliver on all your expectations in the time to come.

The year 2007 will see us release a lot of new and relevant features for you. You will see our search engine getting better with larger coverage of content and cities, with better usability, with better understanding of what you might be wanting to search, and of course, with sharper and more precise results. We can hardly resist the temptation of revealing to you what’s in store; but we will with hold, and let you discover for yourself. Please keep coming back.    

The Guruji team wishes all of you a GREAT 2007. May the new year make all your wishes come true, and give you everything that you always wanted. May the Indian Cricket team win the World Cup. May all the wannabe weight losers shed their extras. May you find the food better, the environment quieter, the cost much cheaper, and May we live in a world at Peace.    

You take good care of yourself and keep smiling. :-)

Team Guruji.

Guruji enters blogosphere...

It was really getting lonely sitting in our Bangalore office, and trying hard to make our search engine better. To top it, we weren’t really talking to our friends for whom we were trying to make Guruji better in the first place. We wanted to talk to our users…We wanted to talk to you…We wanted to know what you thought of us…We knew we can get much better by just listening to you….We wanted to tell you what lies ahead….Yes, We had to start talking and listening….

And, start we did. Everything that we intend to do at Guruji would be centered around you - "the Indian Searcher” - and keeping this spirit in mind, here we are, with our (and that includes you too) own blog. The first edition of the blog brings you an interview with Anurag Dod (our CEO) where we quiz Anurag on Guruji – the origins, the reason for existence and his plans.

We also take you to Bangalore where we capture the launch event of Guruji.

If you are the curious type and are wondering how does guruji work, and how do we manage to get you those results, then this edition brings you a jargon free explanation. 

We are really looking at getting smart people like you to want to work with us, and we tell you about our open positions here – We are hiring.

We then take you to our first commercial where we tried to make the most of the princely sum of a few thousand rupees that our acting CFO (Gaurav) let us “experiment” with. Do let us know what you thought.

Since our launch, our support id (support@guruji.com) has been getting a steady stream of feedback mails from you – our users – and we thought we should compile a few of them and present to you. We thank our users for their sometimes-encouraging-sometimes-criticizing feedback.

We are really very excited to be able to connect with our users through the Guruji blog and we look forward to your participation. Comments, Criticisms, Suggestions, Compliments are all welcome. Please do let us know how we can together create a great Indian search engine. Thanks and keep exploring India through www.guruji.com

The CEO Speaks...

The Guruji blog team (GB) caught up with Anurag Dod, co-founder and CEO of Guruji.com and quizzed him about Guruji.com, the reason for its existence, his views on things to come and how the Guruji team plans to take on the large established search players. And here is what he had to say –

GB: Hi Anurag, thanks for joining us on the Guruji blog. Lets start with something about yourself.

Anurag: My pleasure. Before I begin this chat I would like to thank all Guruji users for their positive response around Guruji and their rich feedback, thank you very much. Well, about me, I am originally from Sundarnagar, near Shimla. I did my schooling there and later completed my B.Tech from IIT-Delhi. After graduating from IIT, I worked for Synopsis for a couple of years, then went to the US for my higher studies and did my MS in Computer Science from University of Michigan, Ann Harbor. Post that, I worked for companies like eBay, Wisenut, Delsoft. After spending close to 10 years in the US, I thought its time to come back to India and here I am.

GB: After spending so many years in the silicon valley, what made you come back to India?

Anurag: Well, the India growth story. I know it might sound cliché but India indeed is becoming one of the few global destinations that are experiencing a true inflection point. We are already one of the largest economies of the world, we have one of the largest mobile user base, our technology talent is being globally recognized and the booming economy is ensuring that we have a huge opportunity to serve a large market. I personally think, India is the best place for anyone to work and realize their dreams, as good a place as the Silicon Valley. 

GB: The India story indeed…Tell us about how did you meet Gaurav (the other co-founder) and how did you guys start Guruji?

Anurag: Well, I and Gaurav go back more than a decade. We first met at IIT Delhi where Gaurav was studying Computer Science. Gaurav was one year senior to me and we stayed in the same hostel. After, completing his graduation Gaurav went for his higher studies in the US, where we kept in touch. When the idea of an “Indian search engine” came to me, I shared it with Gaurav. We had long discussions on why we should, we shouldn’t, till we were convinced that an “Indian search engine” was indeed needed and it will give us a huge opportunity to serve the Indian market. Once we were convinced we took the plunge.   

GB: Great, sounds like an interesting story... Page-Brin, Jerry-David..and now Anurag-Gaurav. Is it important to hunt in pairs to start a search engine?

Anurag: (Laughs..) I guess, it’s just a coincidence. What they have achieved is simply tremendous, absolutely superb and it’s a difficult act to follow, and we just hope that the coincidence extends to Guruji too..

GB: Sure, We wish you all the best. Now, that one question probably everyone is asking you – “Is there a need for an Indian Search Engine”?

Anurag: (Smiles..) Yes, you are right. That’s one question everybody is asking us right from the VCs to my driver… Going forward we see a few things happening in the Indian context  - the Indian internet user base will grow in size, the demographics will change, the local content as well as local language content will grow, Indian marketers will further adopt the search marketing option and all this will require an Indian search specialist. To answer your question, Yes, we believe that there will be a need for an India focused search engine and that’s why we exist. But a more important question for us is not whether an Indian search engine is needed or not but “What will make an Indian search engine needed?” and I guess the answer lies in what we make available through an Indian search engine. We want to create an experience that the Indian searcher with an Indian query has never had before and that’s where all our efforts are focused on right now.

GB: How do you plan to differentiate yourself against the current options that an Indian searcher has?

Anurag: If you look at the current options of an Indian searcher these are essentially of three types

1. It Is the India focused page of one of the larger global search players,
2. India focused web directories/search engines
3. Online yellow pages.

In the first option, the global players have good technology but with a global expanse they don’t tend to serve the Indian query in the best possible way. Option 2 were never serious players and they lack the relevant technology. Option 3 has a structured content but then it is limited by the size of the content and ease of use. What we plan to do is combine the best of all these options – a state of the art technology, a sharp India focus and rich structured content. This will allow us to create clear differentiators against other options. Our “City Search” feature is one such differentiator and going forward you will see many more coming from Guruji. Stay tuned…

GB: Why the name Guruji, isn’t it too “Indian”? 

Anurag: That’s precisely why the name because Guruji is about India too. ‘Guruji” stands for a spiritual teacher / counselor whom one seeks when one has a question. As a search engine we see ourselves as no different. We are here to answer a search query (question, if you will) that any Indian searcher might have and we will try and find the best answer to what he/she is looking for in the shortest time possible. Indeed like an authentic and reliable Guruji.

GB: Alright, sounds interesting. Coming back to the company, what have been some of your biggest challenges since you started?

Anurag: Oh many…We have faced all the challenges that a young start-up like us can face. Right from getting funds, making the venture operational, getting the right talent, we have had quite a few challenges. But we have had our share of good luck too. We have managed to get the right kind of talent and also a great partner in Sequoia Capital India. So its been good so far.

GB: And why do you think an established technology venture fund like Sequoia decided to fund you?

Anurag: I guess, you should ask the question to them (smiles). On a serious note, I guess what went in our favor was the technology, the team and the merit of the opportunity that lies ahead. Having Sequoia as our partner is also an endorsement of what is possible through Guruji.

GB: Thanks, Anurag. Anything else you would like to tell our audience?

Anurag: Oh, sure. I would like to once again thank all Guruji users for their acceptance of Guruji.com. Thanks for all the time and effort to write detailed feedback and suggestions. Your words of encouragement are surely helping our team to push the pedal harder. We look forward to your support and suggestions and thanks for everything.

GB: Thanks for your time Anurag.

Anurag: Thanks for the opportunity.

This conversation with Anurag was intended to share more of Guruji with you – our user. Please do let us know what you thought and what you would like to know more from the Guruji team. And keep on exploring India through www.guruji.com.  Take care and have a great day.

And the Indian Search Engine was Launched..

The stage was all set for the birth of the next big thing in the Indian Internet Industry – Guruji.com. I know I know it was a bit loud but we really would like to believe so :-). The entire Guruji team was all set for the BIG event and so were our pals from Sequoia. The media were present in all its strength with representatives from – regional newspapers, national newspapers, TV news channels as well as the business channels. Close to 40 journalists were present to know more about Guruji.com.

Anurag and Gaurav from Guruji and Mohit Bhatnagar from Sequoia Capital India (yes, the Indian arm of the VC who funded Yahoo, Paypal, Apple, You Tube in the past) took the center stage to introduce Guruji to the audience. Anurag began with a presentation on Guruji that covered why do we exist? How are we different? And also, some glint on what we plan to do next?

The trio then ganged up to answer questions from the media who couldn’t hide their curiosity around the venture.

 

Mohit (Partner, Sequoia Capital India) expressed his excitement on Sequoia’s association with Guruji and this is what he had to say – “We are excited to partner with Guruji.com as it pushes the envelope on providing better search for Indian Internet users”.

Now, it was time to really feel the search engine and know what makes it really different. The media folks wouldn’t just take our word for it, they really wanted to touch the search engine and see if Guruji indeed was a better option.

They made a bee line to the live demo workstation where they could play with the search engine, and their impressions were reflected in the fabulous coverage that they provided on us.

The post would be incomplete if we forget to express our gratitude to the media for their coverage. We are very thankful to Zee News, NDTV Profit, Times NOW for beaming us on their TV channels. We are also thankful to The Hindu, The Economic Times, The Financial Express, Business Standard, Deccan Herald, Vijay Times, The New India Express and a few others for their story on Guruji.

You can read some of it here -

Guruji has taken birth and we need all your support to help us grow into – What Else? – “The Next Big” thing in the Indian Internet space. We are always waiting for your feedback and suggestions at feedback@guruji.com . Keep exploring India at www.guruji.com .You have a great day and take good care of yourself.

How does Guruji work?

Alright, so you have used Guruji for your Indian searches, some of you liked us and some of you suggested us on what will make you like us. If you belong to the second type, we are working on those suggestions and we are sure you too will like us soon. Oops, didn’t I digress from what the topic of the post suggests? Sorry. This post is indeed about introducing the working of your search engine to you, the anatomy of Guruji. No, its not as scary as it sounds we are going to keep it simple, really simple. To get you those accurate results Guruji follows a 3 step process –

Step 1 - You input a search query

Step 2 - Guruji searches the Web

Step 3 - Guruji displays the result

Alright, I was kidding. It’s slightly more complex than that.

Guruji is India’s first crawler technology based search engine. What that means is that we don’t rely on manual submission of URLs like most Indian search engines / directories do but our crawlers (our smart programs) crawl the web to find high quality Indian content and then stores the content in such a manner that it can be “searched” on in real super-fast speed. The steps we follow are –

Step 1 – Crawl the web – Our crawlers (these are smart programs that visit different websites on the internet) visit various websites looking for high quality Indian content. Our intelligent crawler crawls on both Indian as well as Global websites (like wikipedia, global news sites and so on) to discover high quality Indian content. Once we find the right websites we extract the most relevant Indian content that may have answer to our users’ Indian queries.   

Step 2 – Index and store the content – Once we extract the right content we index it and store it using our proprietary technology. Our unique way of storing content allows us to search on it at the speed of light (well, almost) so that we give you the results quickly. Plus, the fact that we store only India related content means the chance of we giving you a non-India related result is extremely low. This is where we do it better than most global search engines.

Step 3 – Understand your question – We realize that Indian search questions have their own uniqueness. Indian names have multiple spellings (Bhaskar/Baskar or Mukherjee/Mukherji/Mukerjea or Bombay/Mumbai) plus Indian queries can have a combination of languages. We are building the necessary intelligence in Guruji to understand Indian queries in the best possible way.   

Step 4 – Give the most relevant answers to your questions – This is where we assess the relevance of the results that we find. This is a function of the content relevance, reputation of the source and a few other things. We rank the results based on their relevance with the search query.

The above steps are carried out by complex computations and algorithms powered by the sophisticated arrays of high end servers…Phew!!..hope we managed to impress you :-)

Having said the above, we realize that the relevance of our answers can be constrained by the information available on the world wide web. You might be looking for an electronics shop in your neighborhood (say Nagpur) but if this information is not available on the web no matter how good a search engine is, it will not be able to give you the result. Try searching “Nagpur Electronics” on your favorite search engine and see for yourself on what do you get. This is where Guruji’s “City Search” feature comes into play. Guruji “City Search”  is a Guruji search innovation where we search for your query in our content repository of over 700,000 business listings that includes restaurants, theaters, shops, hospitals, hotels, offices and much more in over 16 cities. This gives you detailed answers about the business you are looking for with detailed address and contact numbers. Very soon we plan to expand to many more cities in India. Do let us know if we have not covered your city and if you would like us to add your city too (mailto: feedback@guruji.com ).

Also, do let us know about what you guys thought of this post and what else would you like to know about us….and yes, just a quick reminder – please keep exploring India at www.guruji.com Have a great day and take good care of yourself.   

Thanks for your feedback..

It’s been just a month that we have launched ourselves, and our inbox is already filled with a range of feedback mails – mails with a patriotic dash that compliments us on our Indian origins, mails about our search results being better, as well as criticism and suggestions on how we can improve our look and our search results.

The mails came in from everywhere – US, Dubai, Singapore,Trivandrum,Kolhapur, Dehradun and more.

We have compiled a select few of them; hope you like them as much as we did –

Vidhubala Balaji, had created a firefox plugin to make guruji the default search in the firefox browser. Vidhu, such gestures really pump up our team's morale. We'll definitely try to live upto your expectations. Thanks for the plugin. It'll surely help the firefox users to access Guruji easily.

Mayukh Mukherjee, from East Coast - US, suggested us ideas on how can we make Guruji better by having a better connect with our users. (Guruji: Thanks for the suggestions Mayukh. We are working on your suggestions and keep more of them coming in :-) )

Babu Mynor from Singapore told us how proud he was to use an Indian search engine and he also suggested us some tips on making our UI look better. (Guruji: Thanks Babu. You will soon see us with an improved presentation)

Jaidev Krishna gave us a great feedback about how our crawler can “behave” better (Guruji: Thanks Jaidev. As you would have observed we have corrected the problem. Thanks for your feedback, it would have taken us longer to know the problem without you telling about it to us. Thanks)

“Social Neuron” (the actual name still remains a mystery) expressed us his FULL SUPPORT and told us how he has been setting Guruji as the home page of every computer he is using these days. He also expressed his complain that it took us a bit longer than expected to include his URL submissions in our index. (Guruji: First of all we would love to know the name of our supporter J. Thanks for the passion you have shown for Guruji by setting us as the homepage every time you get an opportunity. That’s simply great. We are sorry for the delay in the URL inclusion, we are working very hard to put all the pieces together. Just give us some time and your continued support, and we will soon live up to your expectations. Thanks)

Then there was Karan who suggested us how we should make Guruji available on GPRS, and Harshad who volunteered to share his database of high quality links that we can crawl through, and Puneet who pointed out an instance of duplication in search results, and Panth who suggested how we should increase our reach to tier 2 cities and towns.

And many more such ideas..which we cannot put here due to lack of space (and also the fact that our competitors might be reading this :-)).

Guys, as a search engine we are rarely at loss of words but then your passionate feedback and encouraging words have really made us “search” for the right words to express our gratitude.

Thanks for the time and effort each one of you have put in to let us know how can we improve, and that is further pushing us harder to make Guruji better everyday.

Please continue to let us know your thoughts at - support@guruji.com. You guys have a great day and take good care.

Our First Commercial..

The product was ready, the launch was done and now it was time to explore the advertising options. We checked a range of options – Newspapers, Magazines, Billboards, TV, Radio, Online, Movie and a few more, only to realize that ALL OF THEM COST A TON OF MONEY…AT LEAST. We couldn’t waste our money on advertising, we needed the money to make our product faster, sharper and better. But then we were itching to send out our first commercial, I mean, can’t we have a commercial of ours, sure we can..we should..we must. The tempo was running high for everyone except Gaurav, our acting CFO, but eventually he agreed to shell out a princely sum of a few thousand rupees for the “experiment”. A few thousand rupees could let us print a few flyers and just that!! What? just a few flyers, that’s it!! Some bit of research and we discovered another option – “Movie Advertising”.

We chose the PVR multiplex in Bangalore as a lab for our experiment. All that we could show was a “Slide” that would be displayed for a few seconds during the interval. And this is what we came up with –

Our Other Options were - (the rest were too bad to be posted here..)

So, if you happened to go to the Bangalore PVR in November please do let us know if you could indeed see us there (We seriously hope you did). Let us know if we used the “corpus” in the right way. Gaurav still maintains that we didn’t…

We are Hiring!!

We at Guruji are trying to create one of the biggest internet companies in India. And to do that ,we need smart, willing and passionate people who can dream beyond tguruhe conceivable, and then work harder to make them look obviously realistic. WE NEED YOU.

So if you think you missed working for Yahoo, Paypal, Apple and others when they were raring to become big, here is your chance. As an organization that aspires to hire some of the smartest brains and most committed individuals, we realize that it is important that we create a work culture that is fun, challenging, flexible and one that amply rewards people for their contribution. We also realize that a work culture is only as good as the people working there, and our current team has a complete congruence with our aspirations. We currently have a team of a dozen bright young people who come from the Top most engineering colleges (IITs, IIScs and the ilk) of India.

We will be very happy to have you increase our headcount. Please get in touch with us for any of the positions mentioned below –

Even if your profile doesn’t suit any of the open positions mentioned below, do drop in your CV and let us know what you would like to do at Guruji. We are growing really fast and at this rate we might need you sooner than we think. :-)

Our current open positions are –

Search Engineer      

Responsibilities

• You will be responsible for the core development of the search engine. You will be involved in all aspects of making the search better.
• The job includes fine tuning the ranking algorithm, developing new heuristics and algorithms to enhance both the performance and relevancy of the search.
• Also develop tools to measure search results, and content coverage.

This role is very technical and you will need a scientist-like approach to excel.                                     

Requirements
3-5 years of experience doing core C, C++ programming preferably at the systems level.
Bachelor/Masters degree in Computer Science or proven track record of being a star who was delivered results in high pressure environment.
Excellent ability to work in a team.
Ability to take initiative to identify bottlenecks and come up with solutions.                                             

Technical Requirements

• Expertise in C, C++.
• Comprehensive knowledge of algorithms especially related to hashing, sorting and other fundamentals.
• Detailed knowledge of different data structures especially for large data set.                                        

A plus

• 2-3 years in a systems, search or networking company
• Experience with distributed systems
• Research experience in advanced Computing especially networking, data mining, information retrieval
• Experience of working in Linux operating system and file systems.                                                    

Application Engineer                

Responsibilities

• You will be responsible for developing new features built around core search platform.
• The job includes writing PHP and Perl scripts to develop some auxiliary applications around the search engine.
• You will be working in a very fast paced environment in which you will be expected to have a very quick grasp of new problems.         

Requirements

• 1-3 years of experience developing web applications using PHP, Perl or Java
• Candidates with Bachelors degree in Engineering (Computer Science graduates are preferred) who posses good programming skills
• Ability to take initiative to identify bottlenecks and come up with solutions
• Willingness to learn new technology and take on new projects.                                                         

Technical Requirements

• Expertise in PHP, Perl or Java.
• Working knowledge of HTML, MySQL.
• Ability to deliver the project independently with little supervision
• Good knowledge of web servers and other internet infrastructures is an added advantage..                   

A plus

• 2-3 experience of internet application development using PHP or Perl. Experience with mobile applications          

System Engineer                                           

Responsibilities

• You will be responsible for managing a farm of Linux servers.
• Your job includes writing monitoring scripts and other utility tools.
• You should be someone who loves to work under pressure and has a quick turn around.                      

Requirements

• 3+ years administering Unix machines.
• Good knowledge of scripting languages like Perl and AWK
• Detailed knowledge of Unix system administration.
• Sound knowledge of system administration like machine configurations like disk partitioning, OS installation and others.
• Ability to install system utilities.

A plus

• 5+ years managing and adminsitrating Unix Servers.
• Computer Science Graduates are preferred.   

Business Development Manager

Responsibilities

• You will be responsible for driving traffic to the site by partnering with other sites.
• You will be responsible for identifying possible content source which will enrich user experience.             

Requirements

• 3+ years of experience working in business development or marketing roles.
• Should have an MBA from a reputed institution.
• Proven ability to deliver results in high pressure environment.
• Good knowledge about the online Internet industry.
• Proven ability to negotiate deals.
• Excellent communication skills, ability to write and analyze the business contracts.                               

A Plus

• 5+ years of experience working at a senior level, your role/title will be revised to reflect your experience.
• Lead marketing or sales effort for online Internet companies.                                                            

If you think you fit the bill then mail us your latest CV at the earliest at jobs@guruji.com . We look forward to discover our next office mate in you. Have a great day and take good care of yourself.