Speaking to eFE, Savio Chow, vice-president and managing director, Asia, for Yahoo! also said that the portal was actively looking to partner with ISPs for co-branding opportunities. "We have partnered with Star Hub in Singapore and Smartone in Hong Kong and consider it a key part of our distribution strategy," stated Chow.

Ironically, Yahoo! is still to appoint an India head and is still in the process of shortlisting the perfect candidate.The partners for news content include names like AFP, The New Indian Express, Business Line, The Hindu, India Abroad News Service, United News of India and Reuters, among others. For finance, the portal has tie-ups with AFX News, BSE, Dow Jones News Wires and Equitymaster, ICICI, IndiaBulls and NSE, among others.

Some of the names the company has partnered with for cricket content include Cricinfo, Cricketnext, Matrix and Reuters. For movies Yahoo! has struck alliances with Cineblitz, Hungama, IndiaFm, Indiainfo, SmasHits and Stardust among others. Greetings on Yahoo! can be sent through Archiesonline, Clubgreetings and Shubhkamna among others.

"We are trying to localize and breathe life into our model of media, communication and transactions in markets across the world and these are non-exclusive tieups. We don't want to deprive our users of any specific content," explains Heather Killen who heads International Business for the portal.

Yahoo! has properties in 12 different languages and has a presence in several Asian countries like China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan with local langauge properties. Most of these (barring China) were launched over the last one year. Killen said the portal would be launching local language properties in India as well shortly.

"We have been building fast, easy-to-use products for these markets and will soon launch langauge searches," says Chow explaining the portal's strateggy for the Asian markets thus far."We expect the Indian market to grow to about 10 million users by 2003," said Killen referring to IDC projections for the Indian market. "We will be making aggressive investments in the market and our primary challenge will be to build a strong local brand," said Jerry Yang, founder chairman of Yahoo! He added that Yahoo! was looking at a balanced growth strategy over the next 5 to 10 years in India.

"Our expectations for revenue are not extravagant given that this market is still in a nascent stage," says Killen.