Gujaratis on the net ahoy! Here is a site of the Gujaratis, for the Gujaratis and by the Gujaratis.

Kemchho.com, a venture of UTV Interactive is the first dual language, interactive website designed specifically with the Gujarati community - here and abroad - in mind. "We have focussed our energies on creating an Internet samaj where Gujaratis from across the globe can converge," says Biren Ghose, CEO, UTV Interactive. He describes it as the ‘Gujarati community’s universal ‘door opener’ and a site that seeks to provide an enduring platform that captures the essence of Gujarat and a Gujarati anywhere in the world.

"We believe in the power of regional languages. We want to reach out to all the people of India, in their own language. Make sure that Internet reaches everyone and in their own language," says Ghose.

Kemchho.com will have both information and entertainment. It will have information about art and culture, travel in India and abroad, recipes of Gujarati specialities, news about events and happenings in the Gujarati community in diverse locations, life styles, films, music, religion, astrology and much more, all regularly updated.

It will also, for the very first time, introduce email and chat in Gujarati. "We are also trying to develop a software wherein something that is typed in Gujarati but in English script, is automatically translated and displayed on the screen in Gujarati," explained Ghose. Also the site has photographs and audio clips related to the various subjects and an attempt is being made to incorporate video clips as well.

Several of the sections are interactive and will allow people to launch their own information onto the Net.

Notably, the ‘Who’s Who’ will invite nominations and information about people who the users think deserve a word of praise or credit. The day’s weather, horoscope, stock market will also be put on-line and updated daily.

"However," explained Ghose, "we will have a screening team in our office which will go through all the information that is loaded on the site to check its authenticity as well as to make sure it is not obscene or unreadable. Everything except emails will be screened and only then loaded onto the site."

There will also be a Daairo - the rendezvous meant to be a platform for everyone to express their views or opinions and discuss issues and topics openly. A matrimonial site will act as a meeting site for prospective brides and grooms in different countries wanting to strike up an alliance with another Gujarati. Notably, this section will soon have video as well as audio clips - another first.

For those, whom wanderlust beckons, is the travel and tours section and for the gossip mongers is the Kemchho samaj buzz.

Fairs and festivals will focus on celebrations, while Gourmet’s delight will lure the foodies.

On-line shopping, games, contests and an e-mail of 6MB space are other benefits.

This is UTVi’s second regional language portal after tamizha-tamizha.com in Tamil. On the anvil are three more language, portals in the next five months. Frontend and middle-ware programming are done in PHP3 and served on a linux platform and the content management applications and database management is done using Oracle8i.

Ghose added, "efforts are also on to bring a broad band content aggregator, already in use in UTVi's Singapore-based subsidiary sharkstream.com to India shortly."

Republished from Indian Express