“ Bigger you grow…
You tend to become more stringent”
More bigger the organisation, more stringent it becomes as far as policies are concerned whether internal or external policies. As I mentioned in my earlier reviews about AOL planning a mega investment in India and with AOL coming their must be absolute insecurity for all the major portals in India. Balakrishna of Rediff.com in a recent interview with a magazine had said that their 3 round of funding is very doubtful. It will be very sad to see a website like rediff.com but definitely they will have stiff competition from the major players.
The next portal on my list to write a review was Sify.com.
Sify.com
The story goes by around 8 years back when Satyam Computers was coming up in the Indian scenario breaking all the grounds and going up higher and higher in the IT ladder in India along with Infosys and Wipro. I was thinking what a name Satyam Computers and was wondering it wont survive for long but I was totally wrong in my judgement. Satyam Became one of the household name and in the list of IT companies for the IT geeks in India who dreamt of working of these Business houses like Infosys, Wipro & Satyam.
Satyam became more of a household name when they launched their isp and had an average speed, and to support their internet erana, they had a website https://satyamonline.com which was I don’t know hardly visited by anyone expect for people who were using their Internet Service.
Sify is a really sweet name, which is their stock quote at Nasdaq. They re launched their website with a revamped name https://sify.com. People initially thought it was a new portal but soon it was realised that once you type satyamonline.com and you were directed to sify.com.
As sify is managed by a cash rich company and have a good Public Relations team, which is always very good for a company. The brand manager of Sify.com believes in simplicity, no doubt they are now over doing with giving TV ads on Sify email, which sucks big time. I will come to that when I will describe about its features.
Design
The design of the site is pretty decent nothing to boast about but atleast the color combination is simple and soothing to your eyes, the font used are very much professional. Though sometimes the website tends to become a bit slow but when you have so much content on the website you can expect that. Though Satyam have its own webfarm where all their servers reside, it should not be the problem so they need to rectify the problems.
Content
As far as content is concerned it comes only after rediff and 123india. As far as search is concerned they are using google as their search engine so you can expect quick results.
Email
EMAIL SUCKS BIG TIME. That’s the first impression you get when you think of sify.com. DON’T go by the flashy and teeny ads which they give because their servers are most of the time down, the emails when you receive have to be downloaded, I don’t know why. Like normal email you can read it on the first instance, you need to download the attachment, I thought their must be some settings to change that but I couldn’t find it, if there is anyone who knows please tell me.
Shopping
Sify mall is an average bet, one USP is the online customer service but the technology used is bad but at least they have that. They don’t have anything great to offer but they do have some good tie-ups. They have quite variety of products and not like fabmart which is stuck to some limited items. I would definitely visit sifymall.com than fabmart just because they have more choice.
Chat
Their chat is similar to Rediff.com, where in they are using Eshare Expressions as their software and have some were around 200 to 250 members in the chat room. So go ahead and chat.
Other good links
http://www.walletwatch.com is very neat finance portal with lot of good content as far as financial aspect is content.
http://www.khel.com There are better sites than Khel but as they wanted to be a complete portal khel was launched.
http://www.prizedjobs.com Again prized jobs .com is better than Jobsahead because I have seen people actually getting jobs from this site. So good option.
The management of Sify are becoming really stringent as regards to diversifying their ideas. One of my close friend is working of Sify.com as a Business Development Manager and he said that, even they are facing loss as far as their sify.com is concerned but still the company insists on spending heavily on the advertisements and they feel that they can overcome rediff as far email is concerned. They must be dreaming about it because, I have not seen anything faster than rediff.com. But as one of the member has questioned about rediff and it is security, even I have question about it.
Apart from these, most of them are common and found in most of the sites, but as far as I know rediff still reigns the Indian dotcoms scenario with simplicity and good content.
The good part for sify.com is the amount of money they have behind them and go on taking over smaller portals and get bigger and bigger. In fact prizedjobs.com was one the portal that is gulping of smaller portal by a large fish.
But that is going to happen. By the end of 2002 you will find lot of small portals either closing down or being taken over by the bigger players.
’’It’s okay to Sniff around Sify sometimes but I would not rule sify completely out and would like to give an average rating. ’’