Indian search engine Zoolley provides results on Alexa ranking and not profiles
When the term search engine pops up, everyone hits Google, Yahoo or Bing. In fact, Google holds a staggering 68 per cent of the search engine market in the US alone. Baidu and Sogou, the Chinese search engines, too hold strong market share and presence, counted amongst the five biggest search engines.
In the Indian context, one of the biggest search engines of Indian origin is 123Khoj, which looks very similar to Google, and has similar functionality. There is also Guruji, which is said to be the first crawler-based search engine developed in India. This search engine is said to make search simple for Indian users.
Joining this crop in more recent years is Zoolley, which was started in 2012, by an alumnus of SRM University, Chennai, Manoj Kumar Mahto.
How is Zoolley different?
Zoolley is an Internet search engine that claims to be child safe that provides organic and general search results. Unlike other search engines, Zoolley does not profile its users, but focuses on getting information from key crowdsourced websites.
Based on the Alexa ranking, Zoolley picks up the top 100 sites of the country. In order to be listed on Zoolley, site owners submit their site details to Zoolley, which is later reviewed by the company and then listed.
We also provide entrepreneurs with cheaper online traffic and leads solutions with dedicated support and advices. This is something which differentiates us from other networks,
Recently, Zoolley acquired Ayah Network, which is a London-based advertising technology platform, and Ad network. This offers traffic based on contextual and behavioural analysis.
Currently, the platform has over four lakh impressions a month, which scales to 451 million views in a month.
The idea and beginnings
Zoolley was created when Manoj was working on his other venture myBCD. However, Manoj’s love for entrepreneurship started with his first venture RetailXDirect. This venture was started in 2008, during his second year of engineering. Though it wasn't successful, it gave Manoj the idea of the workings of the online and e-commerce space.
In 2010, Manoj decided to try his hand in entrepreneurship again this time around he set up Mahto BPO, which worked as a backend and strategic support to e-commerce organizations like Amazon and 100bestbuy. This venture worked well, and he soon decided to build a B2B and B2C platform – myBCD.in (My Business Card Directory) in 2011.
myBCD began to grow, and Manoj soon teamed up with Maheshwaram. They soon made a firm known as ME Technologies that promoted myBCD in the South Indian markets. “After six months of our tie up, we found our first angel investor L Ramesh Kumar,” adds Manoj.
It took months to complete the project. They handpicked 11,000+ business cards from Chennai and processed and uploaded it to myBCD.in It was while working on this process that Manoj developed the search engine Zoolley.
After finishing testing the site, Manoj saw that the traction and results turned out to be good. Manoj says: “We felt the need to have an Ad Network to have better connectivity with the audiences around the world. So we built our own Ad server with the help of a US-based company. The product is called ‘Zool Ads Magic’.”
Way forward
Speaking of their future plans, Manoj says, “We have built a strong network of advertisers and publishers and in the next five months we are looking at chasing and exploring newer markets across India and the world. Our acquisition of London-based Ayha Network has given us the much needed boost. This acquisition is expected to raise the revenue to almost three times.”
Zoolley aims to develop better Ad science technologies. They are also working on building advanced search features for mobile and electronic words to target the e-commerce space.