Isn’t it surprising that Bangalore, India’s Silicon Valley(supposedly) doesn’t have any credible Bangalore-based info service to it’s credit?
There are local search sites, there are city info sites and a few review sites, but none of them under the same roof.
Yulop is attempting to change all that with it’s launch of Bangalore.Yulop.com, a one stop shop for anything and everything related to Bangalore.
Apart from the regular news/weather services (which services like Y!’s ourcity anyway offer, though in a very automated format by reading feeds from few properties), Yulop’s USP lies is the depth of data they have collated for Bangalore.
A few nifty service that deserves mention:
- Swami: is your city guide and hosts all city related info (i.e. news, weather, city events, blogs, forums, videos, city search etc)
- cityfind service – i.e. city specific local business search service. While asklaila, dwaaar and others have also indexed local businesses in Bangalore, Yulop is going beyond that by also helping local businesses create their own microsites (i.e. personal URL like naraynrao,the milk vendor has or the ritzy hotel microsite).
As of now, Yulop has indexed 150+ locations (and all relevant services in these locations) and plans to add more in coming days. - Books.yulop.com: Being a pure Bangalore service (atleast for now), Yulop has gone all the way and have added 2000 Kannada books to their store (they plan to add 8K more by Feb 2008).
To me, this is a service which no other player will even think about (and that’s why Yulop has a strong differentiator). If you want to be a true local/regional portal, you need to provide services which reflect the true nature of that region (which anyway is witnessing an explosive growth).
These services are also available in Yulop’s wap version: i.e. moblr.yulop.com
In future, Yulop plans to expand to other major cities and will host the above mentioned services in their local flavors (like Chennai will witness “cute thambi” replacing Bangalore’s Swami!)
In my opinion, Yulop has done an awesome job of collating information and services that no other player is doing (with a strong local flavor).
And at the same time, they need to probably strike a balance between being too local vs. staying glocal (i.e. globally local – Bengaluru or Bangalore?).
They also need to differentiate (and converge) the services they are offering. For e.g. it gets a little overwhelming if I have to go to different services for different needs (a Bangalore portal should have all the info at one place (be it cityfind, news, books – all under the same URI)).
Do give Yulop a spin and share your feedback. If you are from Bangalore, I strongly urge you to compare the service (with others) and share your findings. Needless to say, please be candid about it!
tags: yulop, Bangalore
Disclaimer: Yulop’s founder, Sri is one of the plug @ pluGGd.in. The post isn’t influenced by this fact.
Yulop needs to add address, to thier DB, of those shops which does not have websites along with crawling. Most of the Shops in B’lore dont have website which are famous. [Asklaila is solving that problem by manually adding address of shops which doesnt own websites]
When I Searched “Nalapak”using CityFind on Yulop, It does not returned the result, while Asklaila return with correct address.
[Nalapak is famous restaurant in Rajajinagar].
Solution for Yulop [what i think]: You can crowd source on Amazon MTurk for adding addresses which can help a bit.
I am regular user of Yulop and Asklaila. Both are Finest Products.
Its really amazing how Yulop with its custom URL is giving even small vendors a web identity.
I hope Yulop can get more such micro sites and enable both the consumers and the vendors to share information.
My regards with you guys
Thanks Mahesh….
We have traversed every nuke corner of bangalore through our off line mode, i would say it takes few more weeks to segregate the data and to lead the pact, we are committed to get the best and most of the Bangalore related information.
We do get listings[info's] and also geocode those set information to get a new wave in local search and you could very well witness it on the live mode, we are in process to get our acts together to make it much more robust and feature filled.
@pavan
Thanks for the feedback….yes Custom URL [micro sites] are very much a effort from Yulop to help SME’s, and other business and individuals to have a web identity, w are trying to solve this by providing a platform to express there business and individual needs for the society through a city channel.
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sir this is from mangalore plz be Attention that urs manager from bigbazzar,who looks after the stock section in mangalore ,misuse the produst and personally sell it outside the prmises where he have a shop outside the city his name is lawrence ,he has a shop via route pumpwell to padil he has a shop there he brings many products from urs permises and sell out there in his shop for attacting the customer,we know everything he had given the bag when we purchase items from his shop,his shop name is ” evershine beauty ue” he brings many display board and anythings he also know where u bring from bombay ,he brings through train he sell it frr cheaper rate sir plz akind note and take a severeve action to him ,he gettts evrything from urs premises,plz sir look this matter ,he spend most of the time in shop ,wrk less in urs premises plz be in attenction ,plz come to his premises and check it he doent have sales tax or professional tax ,he doesnt have licence for all wrk he do in his shop ,plz sir be in attention and look this matter very brief ,if u dont look after it we have put this matter in consumer notice ,where they can sovle this matter ,he gives hand bag and many items from urs place to customer,he says that no one cant do anything ,i have 3 post in life insurance ,indigo nation and he looks after the stock section of big bazzar,sir plz take severe action this matter for misuse the items from u,he had paid many Rs for persons who wrk in urs permises, he have all types of products,this will be publish in paper if u dont take it severly ,now he says all customer come to his place ,plz check the matter severy this all from customer ,i am a govt employer in tax section ,he had given me a bag seal of urs product ,he has many display board ,of indigonation product