What is your strategy for market penetration in the regions outside of the US? Particularly, in the non-English speaking countries?
We have taken a bottoms-up approach so far in most of the other markets where we've launched language properties but in India we feel its best to start with the English language since there is a distinct overlap between the English speaking populace and the Internet-using population. In any case this is a linguistically compliacted market and we want to take our time before deciding which are the languages used by large population groups which again have to be relevant to our market.

When do you propose to launch your e-commerce initiatives in India and how do you propose to tide over the problems of logistics and payment mechanisms?
As far as the logistics issue is concerned India is not alone in its predicament, we've faced similar issues in China and Brazil. In fact, it took us a full three years to launch e-commerce in Germany and France. This is not to say that it will take us three or more years to launch e-commerce in India but it certainly won't be in the next few months either. We will consider partnering with a logistics provider - whether they are retailers themselves or third party logistics providers when we do indeed step into the e-commerce business here. For the moment we plan to focus on content aggregation and community services alongwith building a strong local brand.

What portion of Yahoo's revenues still comes from advertising and when do you expect the migration to e-commerce to happen?
Three fourths of our revenues come from advertising and marketing. By that I mean the various business services that we render corporates. These could be broadcasting and communication services and interactive advertising and marketing services which include brand building and promotions as well for which we charge them a fee. Transactions account for the rest.

When do you expect transactions to take over from advertisng as your key source of revenue?
I don't think this is an either-or situation at all. In fact I think its situation where one activity merges into the other to garner consolidated revenues. What puts the `new' into new media is the way online advertising and marketing function: it's a very personalized form of marketing and brandbuilding and here is a logical progression into transaction. Look at it this way: when we undertake every exercise (advertising, promotions, marketing and brandbuilding) which helps a company sell its products on the portal, there's no reason why we can't sell the product itself right there. It's really about forming a loop, one that encompasses the gamut of promotions and sales.

Can you cite one example where this is actually happening on Yahoo!
We do this for the store The Gap. We undertake all sorts of advertising and direct marketing initiatives for them and we also feature their store on the portal so you can actually shop right there if you want.

How do you see the B2C business in India shaping up?
I think there is going to be a lot of consolidation in retail here. There will be a lot of growth and the only way the larger players are going to be able to garner economies of scale is by consolidating. Eventually we will look at partnering with the bigger players in retail to get our e-commerce initiatives off the ground.