Rediff.com is one of the best Indian portals.
I remember joining rediff.com solely for its webmail service and ended up liking a whole lot more of their services.
Started by an entrepreneur - Mr. Ajit Balakrishnan - REDIFF aims to be the no. 1 portal of India. In my eyes, it certainly is.
Rediff.com offers its users - webmail, news (of almost all types of categories under the sun), website guides, shopping services and other partner services.
Rediffmail: Recently upgraded it’s space to 1 GB! I think it is one of the fastest and most efficient web services in the world. Plus, they have a decent interface that allows users to compose, read and perform other mail functions fairly easily. The nice thing about Rediff mail services is - that - they understand Indian net surfers problems - primarily of slow net connection - and accordingly - have tailored their service. Would definitely recommend Rediffmail to you folks.
Rediff news - Quick, Breaking news. News quality is OK. This is one service that has been there since the beginning and has maintained a decent quality over the years. However, I can definitely say that it can do better in covering news. Tie-ups with Reuters or other respected news organizations would be a definite plus.
Shopping - Very good. Rediff has tie-ups with many merchants / vendors from all possible categories - Apparels to Music to Electronic items - you name it. I have executed 3 shopping transactions with them and completely satisfied with their products. The payment system options include COD, Internet Banking, DD / Cheque and Credit Card.
Overall, Rediff has many tie-ups i.e. Partner services - plus it’s own range of services - that being - Mail, Shopping and news.
Rediff Net Guide is another favorite section of mine - with - specialized topics covered every week - credible websites recommended by Rediff. From Entrepreneurship to Cooking to Hollywood - almost all types of topics covered over last few years.
There are many more services like Matchmaker, Ringtones etc. - which I don’t use - but - will recommend to others based on my good experience with Rediff.
To add some more spice, Rediff also has a special US edition that caters to the NRI audience.
On another note, their in-your-face ads (a recent feature) is very very annoying. It works like this - you look at their news section - go to click on a link - and - an ad pops up from nowhere and covers the entire news section. Even though they have a ’’close’’ link on the ad - I bet - any web surfer would find that a very irritating web incident.
All in all - being with Rediff.com portal has been a very satisfying experience yet
I don’t know how Rediff intends to chart its strategy - but whatever they do - one can only hope - that - they don’t resort to any unethical practices like placing ads as news articles.
To all MS users: Rediff.com is definitely a yes-yes portal :) Go for their web mail services, do some shopping, read their news sections, use their net guide, plus other special sections (like recently they covered Euro 2004), etc.
Three cheers for Rediff!
Note: I DON’T work for rediff :)