Antya is an interesting Indian startup that is taking a different approach to Internet search :: human powered + “website only” results!
So for e,g. if you search for food in Bangalore, Antya will fetch you the websites of angeethi/casa piccola/mtr foods etc.
Started by ex-ibibo product managers, Antya sees itself as a mix of human powered search combining the concept of web directory and discovery.
What’s really commendable about Antya is it’s SERP page – they have taken pains to scrape the site logos and contact details; and has a non-Google appeal ( interestingly, one of the commenter earlier pointed out in one of our posts that Guruji’s SERP looks like modified Google’s css!, thankfully Antya is taking a different and interesting route).
Most significant challenge in Antya’s approach, in my opinion is their assumption that most of the relevant businesses have an online presence (search for tax consultant, doctor in Bangalore do not yield any relevant results).
Another area that Antya needs to clearly find it’s ground is finding relevancy in search results – right now, it’s all human powered, but as they go along they need to clearly sort out what’s relevant (and that needs to be solved algorithmically and not thru’ user ratings).
Having said that, Antya also needs to work on segregating what’s Indian and what’s relevant – for e.g. search for pizza in Bangalore renders you results of websites with US addresses. And I am not too sure whether linking to corporate site is really the most relevant resultset? Most of the corporate/businesses sites do not have the updated and local contact details (yellow pages are more reliable?)
Here is a quick QnA with Antya founder:
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How do you position Antya as? – a business search engine? human powered search engine? or meta search engine? or website directory?
Hmm..there is a overlap with all the options you mentioned. But I guess Antya.com is Human-powered-search combining the concepts of website directory and discovery.
The idea seems to be inspired by Mahalo (human powered?)
Actually not. We always think Mahalo is taking the difficult route by hand-coding the results. The human-powered-aspect in Antya is only to the extend of identifying and adding websites to the index. Search results are completely dynamic.
Unlike US, Indian businesses aren’t online and most of the content is still offline. How do you plan to solve this?
Well, that’s what we thought initially..But the actual fact is that most of the businesses are online but not discoverable. And increasingly more and more businesses are coming online by having a website. Our job is to make the websites discoverable and at the same time help the businesses that are offline to have a website of their own.
Please tell us about your prior work experience.
Bharanidharan has around 8 years of experience in Software Development, Project Management, Internet Product Management and Business Analysis & Strategy. He is a MBA graduate from the prestigious Indian School of Business(ISB) and has a Mechanical engineering degree from Anna University. ..has served in Cognizant Technology Solutions, J&J Belgium, Convergys Information Management Group and recently at iBiBo Web Private Limited as Senior Product Manager.
Sunny has around 4 years of experience in Online Sales, Account Management, Internet Product Management & Public Relations. He is a graduate from Indian Institue of Mass communications (IIMC) and was a gold medalist. ..has spent most of his career at Google India, where he was one of the founding employee and was awarded “Best employee Asia Pacific region” and recently served at MIH as a Product manager.
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Give Antya a spin – I, for sure will keep an eye on this interesting idea. What’s your take on Antya’s approach?
Recommended Read: Detailed analysis of local search market in India
I read once about the human powered search engine.check out this too http://www.mahalo.com/Main_Page
Very interesting idea – but I wonder how scalable it is? I mean do they really know about all the sites for all the possible queries?
And somehow I am missing the local data – like the review says, search for pizza takes me to do pizza corner site which doesn’t really have any info at all.
They need to probbly find a mix of local as well as site data.
overall, a good effort and a good review!
i think Vivek Pahwa of Desimartini is funding them .
How do you know that Prashanth?
apologies for accidental & Incomplete submission of last comment . ….
As far as scope of Human Powered Search is concerned ……well its its a very context specific thing . i was involved in a good discussion about this at Venturewoods [http://tinyurl.com/2h27g9] . only possible advantage any human powered search engine can offer is that of protection from SEO games but scalability of these endeavors in terms of Cross Geographical adaptation is something i am not very sure of .
till yesterday it was an insider’s info but today whole world know it
read it here
http://www.vccircle.com/2007/12/07/pahwa-kbs-backs-india-focused-human-powered-search-engine-antyacom/
and here
http://www.webyantra.net/2007/12/06/antyahuman-powered-website-discovery-search-engine/
Prashant – Here is a good review of mahalo : http://www.centernetworks.com/mahalo-launches-my-critical-review
“This is the ultimate way to “game” Google/Yahoo/etc. Create a page that highlights x person, get Mahalo up to a high page rank (.. and now traffic is sent to Mahalo instead of to the person/company web site. These type of web sites should not have a pagerank nor should be listed within the search engines.”
Do you think Antya is more than just a human powered search?
As far as I know – 98% of businesses in India are still offline! My candid opinion is that Antya seems to be just scratching the surface.
(maybe I got influenced by the fact that it’s funded by DesiMartini guy..), but honestly there ain’t any BIG reason to use this product.
What is Human search btw, well my understanding says, its more of semantic in nature, where many people search something and this is tagged and grouped to find similar results and helps in many other activities…….can there be a human search without the machine activities
Well, Antya > The end…is it apt….i don’t see good use of it until and unless i i search for a barber in Bangalore and to my surprise [holy Sh**] my barber also has website and he takes appointments, as rajat said 98% is Indian business is online, if you got to aggregate only website information apart from actually getting the data within it, you don’t have to be called as human search…..well, for me it would be good to accept the search results in a manner other local search engines are doing it, but how would Antya help me in sorting things for only people who have website and they run business?
Coming back to some technical feats, thye have awesomely integrated the Google search, and btw where did/do get there information on to there DB? it should either be crawling or manual feed, well I strongly believe rather than Antya making inroads, its Google which is making inroads by releasing the API and pampering others to use it to enter the local feeds, but its a good technical effort from the Antya team, appreciated
My best wishes Google
To be honest I liked Antya’s idea. I’ve been exploring ‘Mahalo’ for sometime now and Antya is 70%-75% of it. I Liked the GUI and their approach towards a search engine.
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But I have to say this, why would people not use Onyomo or other local search engines to know about their business plus the directions.
It is rightly said by them that they hurried the project in 2 months flat. So, a human-powered search engine slapped with a cool GUI is what makes Antya. But I personally feel they should open-up their process of ‘Human Powered Search’ and explain it to the common public about it.
Sunny and Bharanidharan you guys have good experience behind you but dont you think users especially in India will stick to Yahoo! and Google? I like your approach but you need to think about the strategy for introducing it to the public (another visit to the Gurgaon mall again?)
But still good work I’ll keep a constant tab on Antya.
I hope I’m not sounding grand by trying to answer all questions in one go… but didn’t want to spam throughout the day:
Hi Sameer,
Thanks for you encouraging feedback. Scalability was a question we were worried about too. We expected less than 50 per cent chances of meeting the queries. First day (Dec 7 stats) stats, we met 62.25 per cent of all queries and as of now, we have met 53.01 per cent (Dec 8 stats). So, pretty much on target. Point taken on the local search bit, we will improve on it.
Hi Prashant, Rajat, Ashish,
It’s glorious to try to be Mahalo, and honestly, it never occurred to us that we would be taken for a human powered search. In fact, in our FAQs, we call ourselves the ‘new-age’ web directory – another glorious term, but we felt we were closer to it.
Manoj,
We didn’t find a barber in Bangalore that has a website ? but we did find “dry cleaners” in Mumbai & delhi. Anyways, I will convey your wishes to Google ? Worked for it, and I am still in awe of it.
Thanks Utkarsh,
Initially, we debated (in the ‘Gurgaon Mall?’) that we could sit making a great product for over a year, but wouldn’t know if there is a need, just like we wrote on “Idea Behind.” Instead, we thought, we could be reactive, and focus on what users want once we launch a basic framework. Human Powered, or not; you will find us as the most ‘reactive search engine’. We have set some highly optimistic targets on “Unmet Queries.” Hoping to met them.
Overall, I know, we have a search feel, but Antya is more about browse or (a grander term) discovery. We complement web search engines, rather than compete with them. That’s why we have something called, “Are You Looking For” on the results page. We are thinking of changing the ‘search’ tab to take a positioning away from “Search.” Any ideas besides “Go” or “Find”? Will look forward to your feedback on sunny at antya.com
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