Rediffmail NG is really the mailbox ready to compete with GMail, YMail or Outlook?

Rediffmail which used to be the default mailbox of the many in India, will now be surprise to know is still alive. Rediff.com is no more the default home page. Rediff has lost everything from default portal to mail to chat. Rediff used to be the default home page for the most people in India (being the fastest loading portal, many times faster than yahoo) but now Google is the only home page it seems. Yahoo has taken the leap in being the portal of choice.

Rediff Bol which used to be a popular chat client is dead. Rediffmail NG which they call as next generation is also seems to be taking its last few breaths. At the time when hotmail is set for overall makeover to metro style outlook to survive against GMail and YMail, Rediff seems to loose the race and is showing no innovation. Rediffmail NG even don't have push notification. Integration with other Rediff services is poor. Also, Rediffmail NG on web look unfit and the mail interface is poor.

Rediff should understand that they have seen a stiff competition in all fields and companies like Web18 and Indiatimes are producing better innovative products than Rediff and Sify which used to be the top companies earlier.

Also, Rediff always competed with Global Giants like Google and Yahoo. But with the emergence of Orkut they start loosing and then lack of innovation kept them on back seat and now out of the bus. Rediff need to set a line up of products which people like, for example, Rediffmail, Rediff Bol, ZaraBol, MyPage and Portal(news etc). Then they need to innovate on all of these with full focus and try to compete aggressive with global giants. Standing out and watching the global do business won't help them much and in the end they need to sell the company.

Rediff need to be more focus on its main product and try to be number one in those in India, then only they think of being in profits.

Where did rediff lost the battle?

I still remember using Rediff Bol when i entered college. Later I moved to orkut and then to gtalk, and rediff bol doesn't exist. It was the light weight  that made me use this rediff bol as it was really easy to install on all PCs at college. But with the entry of orkut things changed and we move to scraps. Also, all our friends were sync on gtalk and we start using it as it was also light weight.

Rediff lost when they didn't made the entry into social networks and also did not try to maintain their priority to low band network connection in India. Rediffmail was always as popular as yahoomail or gmail but now things have changed and people even open rediff.com which use to be home page for all earlier.

Rediff tried to consolidate on news, but major players like indiatimes and moneycontrol took that over and left rediff some where lost. Rediff now has  no product in which they are leaders in India. Rediff seems to lag behind in the present race. Rediff is trying its hand in e-commerce like deals and online shopping but due to tough competition from start ups, not able to make any impact.

Rediff is posting losses every quarter and now it seems to be lost the internet battle in India.

Can India build its own Facebook?

This seems to be a big question that is it possible for India to build its own Facebook. The only possibility is from R&D. But looking at the R&D standard in India it seems to be quite far ahead in future. Right now R&D in India means "Receive and Dispatch" where as the world believes in Research and Development.

Till the time India do not get innovative on web products they cannot make the Facebook in India. Facebook beats all with all the innovation it brought to the world of the Social Network, and hence captured the same to become the strongest element of it. Indian Internet companies don't seems to have that fire in them. Rediff which seems to be a bit global is like an old forgettable story. World has move so much ahead India which has stayed back and lost the race by many laps.

We have even seen the global trend where people make innovative products and sell them to larger companies as a very good cost. And those companies run these products as a bigger success story or at-least to its maximum potential. Unlike India, where some people copy the idea from west and then build the sell the unpolished product to Indian Internet Company for an average price. Being unpolished and stolen it becomes a flop in front of its original western counter-path.

Hence, innovation is the real requirement of the world today and till the time we do not achieve it we cannot build a better Internet Industry and cannot imagine to have a Facebook build in India.

Indian web companies letting things go away

Indian companies don't seems to be serious about business. Product up-time is very necessary for it to gai market share. But i saw things going in the wrong direction today.

Indiatimes mail is not working. Just think the mail service used by few is not up and people will move out, so they will be left with nothing. Also there mail service use Zimbra and hence do not launch new service in a shorter period, making user get bored. There is a bigger issue with Indiatimes mail is that you cannot export contact. So, user may fell like a jail.

Second problem is with rediff. Rediff has services like Page and Zarabol which do not require rediffmail.com account and you can very well use rediff account which is created by using your mail id. But this advantage they loose as registration cannot be done and it throws an error while trying to register.

Hope Rediff and Indiatimes will become little serious and will provide India with better products and services.