AskLaila - India gets a Local Search startup

By Vivek | August 13th, 2007 at 03:32 pm ET         

Just to complete the title - with a name that sucks, aka AskLaila. Anyone from India couldn’t agree more. And if you are not from India, just ask one of your friends from India about the out of the world domain name that the startup has chosen to go with. Okay, it is not that bad, but still not a good choice for a largely conservative country. Anyway, from product standpoint AskLaila is looking to do what Yelp, Ask Local, Google Local, Mojopages and all are trying to offer in US - Local Search. AskLaila is backed by Matrix Partners, which had invested undisclosed amount of funds in the startup Four Interactive, which is the parent company for AskLaila.

Currently AskLaila is powering search, reviews, and rating for local services and businesses that includes shopping, restaurants, clubs, events, lifestyle, and more. Since broadband never took deep roots in India and there has always been dearth of user-generated content, AskLaila team is creating editorial content to supplement user reviews.

The service is initially launched in Bangalore, will be expanded to cover 22 more cities in India. It is interesting to note that AskLaila has gone for a wider range of services to rate and review for smaller geographical area, instead of going for couple of local service categories in a broader geographical market.