If you live in Delhi or Bangalore, you should celebrate! For your life just got easier. A Delhi based web startup has built a localized search engine that promises to save your time, money & effort in searching for local facilities. If you are web savvy, you may never again need to pick up your local yellow pages.
OnYoMo is a first-of-its-kind search engine in India. Its mission is to create a practical search solution for some of your daily scenarios. So, if you want to find a shop selling the latest Nokia N91 cellphone in South Delhi, or locate a Cafe Coffee Day outlet in Koramangala that has WI-FI connectivity, OnYoMo is where you should head.
OnYoMo is short for ‘on your move’. Its a startup that is being incubated out of IIT Delhi and has some IIT professors amongst its advisors. Currently in beta, OnYoMo is available for Delhi/NCR & Bangalore; Mumbai is going to be covered pretty soon.
OnYoMo delivers the output of your search query on the website, but using a service called ‘Text-It‘, you can forward the info (free of charge) to a mobile phone. It can also deliver the output to IM clients (though I couldn’t figure out how). Based on algorithm driven search and result retrieval, OnYoMo uses the Eicher City map as the maps database for you to physically locate the searched address.
OnYoMo would probably not be able to rival GoogleMaps; but for an Indian audience, its ability to mashup local maps with search queries is great. It is certainly the best that I have seen on any Indian site. The website has a web2.0ish kind of clean interface; the UI is AJAXified in a GoogleMap like manner.
You can search for restaurants, movies, florists, hotels, bookstores, coffee shops, electronic gadgets etc. And you can filter the search results further to narrow down to what you want; it also allows you to rate the particular product/service.
The ‘proof of the pudding is in the eating‘, so I tried searching for ‘Chinese food‘ in ‘Green Park‘ in ‘Delhi/NCR‘ on the site. The search results are displayed in the images below.
It displayed the contact addresses of a few up market Chinese food joints in and around Green Park in South Delhi. That’s good !
I clicked on the ‘Maps’ icon next to a search result and the Eicher Delhi city map (zoomed in) showed up in a AJAXian pop-up box. That’s great !
Then I clicked the ‘Text-It’ icon and forwarded the query to my mobile number. With the next minute, the result arrived in my mobile messages inbox. And the SMS is free. That’s excellent !
All in all, by Indian standards, this is a ‘killer application’ and should do very well.
While on this, here is my spontaneous, ‘back-of-the-envelope’ feedback to the OnYoMo team.
– While searching through maps, the zoom in/out functionality is still not what I would have liked..
– I’d love to be able to search through a internet enabled cell phone (don’t know if a mobile version is planned)
– You could do with a better recommender system within the search results
– Lastly, OnYoMo doesn’t have a corporate blog. One of the beauties of web2.0 is the constant dialogue between product creators and product users as a means of improving the product. Blogs are an integral part of it. Corporate blogs also add a human face to the company and users like that. I am saying this from personal experience !
Looked at the site, from someone viewing from the other side of the water, its very slow.
Liked the maps, but need to move around a little but more, I guess we are too used to google maps
You said the maps allowed you to create mash ups ?
Agree need a blog so we can talk to the builders direct, make it two way…but an excellent start, but I would change the examples, i.e have real examples in there, and also change the design a bit, because its very pale, all the sections aren’t clearly defined.
Also it would be great if I knew why it was first of its kind, personally I wouldnt mention the words “search engine” everyone thinks google,
Iqbal
Hello Amit,
You did a good job of summarizing onyomo, though a few things I would
like to add:
1. We are not just web-based startup, we are working to cover all
digital medias like mobiles, handhelds etc (and ofcourse IM !!)
2. Though at core we are a search engine (we love to call ourselves as
‘physical’ search engine as opposed to ‘online’ search engine ..), we
do also allow ppl to make purchase decisions and would provide more
value added services.
3. current maps are just a proof of concept thing, and soon we would
be releasing newer much more functional maps.
What do you mean by “You could do with a better recommender system
within the search results” … as in ranking the results by users
recommendation ?!
Amit,
Thanks for your clarifications. Here’s a few points.
1. You mention IM; hows that going to work; I tried to figure that out but couldn’t.
2. Glad to know that the current maps are only proof of concept. I am looking forward to the REAL ones.
3. By better recommendor systems, I meant something like “people who bought ….also bought ….” ; the way amazon.com does it; although it might be an overkill currently..just a suggestion..
amit ranjan
Wow. It is a great start. But few things I would like to pint out (for the enhancement of onyomo.com, not as a criticism, as I know it is in beta and any such effort should be appreciated):
1. For every search result it shows a map, but when I open map I could not see the place exactly located on the map, rather it just show map of that area.
2. Site needs to speed up, as I found it slow many places.
3. Probably missed many important and suitable places where AJAX must be used, rather I found places, where AJAX is not needed, but unfortunately have been used (web2.0 is not just about AJAX and must be used ONLY where it is needed).
However I am so excited to see this concept, new for India and of course it would make life easy, if not easier.
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Just as an update, we’ve launched SMS Search for Delhi/NCR. Now you can search Onyomo from your mobile phones by sending an SMS like “find munnabhai noida” to 8558.
Find more information on http://www.onyomo.com
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