Hudku : World’s ‘Local’ Search Engine; Add a Twist to Your Searches

First things first, if you don’t understand Kannada, Hudku translates to ‘search’ in the language. Arun Kumar the founder at Hudku had a pretty heartwarming response when I asked him for the meaning, “We carry the language of the land on our tongue and colours of the nation in our heart”So, what’s special about Hudku?

The precise search site aims to give search result with the added parameter of location. If you're looking for anything around you, Hudku aims to get the best search results for you and quickly.

Typical searches:

Some pretty neat technology powers this feature. “We call it a path breaking technology because even if large number of people all over the world, have multiple listings each at hudku and even if much more larger number of people search those listings, our technology is already geared to handle that amount of vast data, large number of simultaneous users and still deliver the search results without any perceivable deterioration in the speed” believes the team.

This is fascinating, but can this get more interesting? Can one add more details? What if I’m looking for something like a restaurant in Bangalore that allows dogs?

Hudku has looked into this requirement as well and is trying to tinker around with “attributes” to have them included. This is not possible as of now but we might see a breakthrough in this area in the future. Arun explains this point further, “If the query is elaborated little bit more with Attributes then it becomes interesting. For example, a Fabricator is a general category. But if the query is ‘Fabricator with milling, grinding & electoplating facilities in Ghaziabad’ then it becomes interesting and at the same time we believe that it a very valid and not an imaginary requirement. For such queries even in Google you do not get good results. Every business after all wants to let their customers know about their specialities and uniqueness. So while posting their listing in hudku if they mention all the features they can offer then they become searchable by those features or Attributes”

Sticking to what we have currently, how does one get listed on Hudku?

One needs to get an account for this which is free. Once you have it,

• You can add any number of listings or if your business listing is already present, claim and own it.
• Edit and manage all your listings.
• You can add photos, videos, audios or any other documents (Ex: Catalogues, Menus) and you can also write a description of the service you provide or the product you deal with.
• It’s ok if you don’t own any listing. As a registered user you are allowed to send an enquiry to a bunch of businesses with your requirement so that they can call you instead of you calling them.

Monetizing

“Currently our main focus is to reach 100,000 - 1/2 a million - 1 million visitors a day. Once we are successful in achieving that, there are multiple revenue streams that will open up.” says Arun.

How will they do it?

“The way we intend to reach such number of users is by continuously improving our quality of search and keep adding business data of several countries. Currently we carry good amount of data of Indian businesses, some amount of data of USA, UK & Australian businesses and we are currently in the process of adding very good amount of Singapore business data.” informs Arun. Hudku has big plans with cosnolidating data in these countries first and then moving onto non-english speaking nations.

Current Status:

• 1650 visitors daily
• April 2012 saw an aggregate of 38,000 visitors spread across 2,300 cities and 140 countries
• Majority traffic is from India, four metros along with Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad being the main contributors.

The team behind the mission

Hudku has an experienced trio at it’s helm. Arun Kumar who is the founder and CEO, has a Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical from Mysore University. He has 25 years of experience as a Software Engineer and so far has five US patents to his credit.

Mehar Simhadri, the cofounder is an engineering graduate from REC Warangal. He has about seven years of software development experience and is an expert in JAVA and Web technologies.

C R Balaji, the director is an engineering graduate from BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore, former Vice President at Mphasis Limited and has about 17 years of experience.

With a great idea, cumulative experience of almost 50 years and the burgeoning ‘Searc space’, it’s going to be really exciting to see how Hudku progresses.

Make your Hudkus here. And just to reinforce how location is becoming so important, have a look at what Stay In Touch Mobile is doing and also have a few insights into social discovery.