Agencyfaqs has a good interview with Mahendra Swarup, former MD and CEO of Times Internet, who operates Indiatimes.com, one of the top Internet portals in India. Mr Swarup steered Indiatimes through the Internet bust of 2000 to make it a leading Net portal and mobile content service (8888). He is currently the Chief Mentor at Smile Interactive, a top interactive services company in India. The article is a must-read for anyone having a stake in the Internet in India.
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Shiv Sena, a regional political party headquartered in Mumbai, is demanding that social-networking site Orkut be banned in India. The party is particularly irked by Orkut's hate communities on party leader Bal Thackeray and party idol Chhatrapati Shivaji.

The protests have turned violent in the last week. Shiv Sena activists vandalized some cybercafes in Mumbai and are pressurizing owners to ban access to the site.

However, Shiv Sena is now saying it does not want Orkut banned completely, but only wants the hate communities removed.
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Tata Group company VSNL has become the first company to launch WiMax services in India. It commenced the services to enterprise customers in Bangalore last week.

WiMax will solve last mile connectivity issues faced by enterprise customers and make wireless broadband a reality for retail customers.

VSNL has announced plans to roll out WiMax network to 120 cities across India for enterprise customers and five cities for retail customers by the end of this financial year. The company also operates nearly 300 public W-iFi hotspots in India.
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Yahoo! has termed India as the "next big opportunity". Yahoo! India is gearing up for competition after its traditional US rival AOL launched India operations last month.

On the eve of launch of AOL.in, Yahoo! India announced two new service offerings and some organizational initiatives. Yahoo! officially launched beta versions of Yahoo! Our City and Yahoo! India Maps.
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AOL launched its India portal aol.in recently. It will be AOL's first portal in Asia, outside US and Europe.

The AOL India portal offers all the usual features like email, instant messenger, mobile services and video. It also has some India-centric content like CityGuide, Bollywood, Gurus and Cricket. While AOL does not plan to be an ISP in India, its portal content will be written in Indian languages.
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