VC Circle reports that Guruji may close under $10 million in series B funding from Sandstone Capital (Sequoia committed $7 mn for Series A funding earlier)
Guruji has also revived it’s homepage and looks like, the algo change is underway (should be, since the search results are just not relevant).
Google’s entry into local search market is going to separate the boys from men and players like Guruji are under a serious threat. More than the quality of product, what’s missing is clear differentiation/product positioning.
What’s your take on Guruji?
Please take a poll (on right sidebar) and answer a simple question “Which local search service do you use?” The results (and analysis) will be published tomorrow.
tags: guruji
$7 million already in their kitty and still hungry for more? WTF!?!
are the VC’s going crazy or something? now $10 million?
My personal opinion is that they should stop having a plush office and concentrate on development. Guruji sir, stop asking for more money man, start your development process.
Jeez! having a degree from IIT does work isnt it Ashish? Seriously, if they secure another $10 million the VC’s should really start sorting out their criteria for investments.
the poll does not have a friend option. i generally just call up some friend!
@Utkarsh:
Well, Sequoia committed Guruji $7mn,not too sure of how much was actually delivered (it was performance-based committment, and they might hv rolled back after seeing Guruji’s dismal performance).
‘
Even I am surprised – $10mn? Maybe, you are right – IIT degree + M$ experience helps!
@Rajiv:
I should have added that! My mistake!
Ashish,
I am not in India, so I generally don’t need to use Indian Local search engine. However, I would like to use an Indian focused search engine. I have tried using Guruji a few times, but it has disappointed me. Searching on Guruji seems like searching on Google with a different CSS style sheet and poor results. They do not add any value for being an “Indian Search Engine.”
Do they have any advertisers yet? A couple of months ago they were promoting use-our-search-box-on-your-site and we will pay you some % from the revenue earned from the site. I noticed that a couple of big sites have taken down the search box now.
Gaurav:
Your statement “Searching on Guruji seems like searching on Google with a different CSS style sheet” – hits the nail right there on the head!
I couldn’t agree more on this front (and am LMAO!! now!
)! Infact, even am surprised to see Guruji (and several others) just copying Google – right from the text box to serp.
people who have questioned the money flowing in have no idea of what they are talking about!! do they even know the cost of running a tech startup? and the difference between committed funding and outright funding?
but the crux of the matter is right. guruji is not performing well in terms of results and the UI lifting off google is quite evident. I would still rate them best among rest in terms of being a local search engine with the leader of course being google. one year is a very short time to judge a firm epspecially when they are taking on someone of google’s magnitude. maybe they will never surpass google but even fi they can take away 20% market share from google in the next 2 years, that will be a great achievement. Lets see where the next two years take them!
@ganesh
I think $7 million is more than enough for having a tech startup. I have my own startup and believe me is everything is correctly processed and at sometimes thought about, I bet Guruji.com could have been setup in few thousand dollars
I dont have anything against the startup but its been an YEAR and still no one knows what is Guruji. I myself came to know in September.
Lets question ourselves that does Guruji.com need anothr $10 million whopper to change their GUI? to do Business Dev? to pay percentage to their “use-our-search-box-on-your-site” users? or simply get Guruji in the limelight? That yes, we are going for another round, we are huge and we’ll make it.
Good luck to them anyways.:)
@Utkarsh, internet startups of the scale of guruji , onyomo, dwaar etc need at least 15 dev guys each of whom take up about 20-30K$ per annum and add to that the sales, marketing distribution teams and also the ops which should include marketing and advertising. what is the data center magnitude and cost u are talking about. its not like some redbus site which can be done in 2 servers. its a search engine and the dynamics involved in terms of infrastructure are huge. Also there is a difference between companies that are built-to-flip and companies that are built-to-last. until we know which category guruji falls, it might be premature to talk about it. i may be able to develop a working prototype and market my idea in under 5K$ and sell off the company at first opportunity for half a million $$ and cool off….
if we need to question, lets question the quality of results and innovativeness of such companies which is also quite poor now. questioning how much money they get is not valid since the VCs have a fairly clear idea of what they are getting into and analyse the entire stuff before investing!!
ganesh – you seem to be in some kind of illusion about startups in India.
onyomo has 5-6 people.
dwaar started out with a 6-7 member team
ixigo had only 7-8 people last time i checked.
You dont need 7M$ in India or 15 member team to run a great startup – you need committed people with a passion and hunger to build something. money is always an advantage and there is no end to how much you can burn.
so far, i havent seen anything guruji has done which would cause me to start using it or understand how 7M can be spent.
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Ashish,
When we set out build Guruji, we knew that we have an uphill task ahead of us. And today, after close to 18 months since we started, we look back with pride for what we’ve achieved so far, not everything of which reflects on our site today. But let me assure you that it will show up in very quick time and it’s going to make heads turn.
As far as the passion of our team is concerned, we welcome you to come down to our office in bangalore and meet us sometime to get a hang of our team out here. I bet you’ll feel like re-editing your comments. Out here we strive to make progress each day and trust me on this: We are on our way to build a world-class search engine !
Rome was not built in a day.. and Guruji is not much different.
Stay tuned and watch this is space. It’s just heating up !!
Pranil Dasika
Search Engineer,
Guruji.com
PS: Normally, we dont take these comments very personally, but you’ve fired up some of our team-mates, by questioning their passion
.
Pranil!
That was the entire intention. I was talking to a VC friend of mine, and we ended up with just one frustration – ‘why can’t we have our own baidu?, why the same old G/Y/m$?”.
I’d love to see an Indian search engine challenging the biggies and creating a niche which Goog’s algo can’t even touch!
The post was not written to demean any product, but most importantly to “maybe, shake up a few individuals/startups who have the ability to challenge G!”
I do look forward to some kickass stuff from Guruji!
Guruji.com has the strength of local search in Indian Languages. And full marks for them. but google is also striving for same.
They need to be innovative to keep their score up.
Sourav
http://www.travel-monitor.com
well i had been checkin on guruji quite often since its inception … felt happy about Indian Search Engine
… all the best! keep your promise of bringing forward a worldclass search engine.
… even i’m not satisfied with results either. i ll suggest to change the looks, style etc….. may be you guys will hav smthin great cooking at the backend but pay some attention to the frontend as well.. nobody(at least users like me) are going to compare the results of search engines… they will use it anyway if it gives some reasons to do so.
Presently I feel its nearly impossible to get ahead(locally/globallly/segments they target based on Search) of Google like giants purely on performance/better algos etc… just because it has been there and seen everything for last decade.. guruji, i think need to create such reasons….
do let me kno if im mistaken.. m jus in early twenties.. still learning.. duno if its really good to have 5-8 or 20-25 people to build a search engine like guruji… things that suit me might not be fitting someone else… in the end, comttment and persistence is all that makes a startup take a leap forward…
…
Guruji search engine is good for giving relevant result according to the query but can u heard about that serch engine which gives result google and yahoo on same scree.
Regards
Road Side Romeo
http://www.roadsideromeo.net
It’s correct, they can innovate and do much better. But for the time being I would say the results are just ok. I would like to hear from them their index pages. Also they should try some new search stuff like Semantic Search.