There is a strange enthusiasm and energy in the new graduates in India. With the economy growing at the rate of more than 8% they have every reason to smile. No, it is not only the job offers which make them go ga ga but the opportunities of entrepreneurship which India Inc. is offering.

The last two years have seen lot of activity in this direction and it seems that they have learnt a lot from the dotcom era few years back. Welcome to dotcom 2.0, we have a whole lot of startups by the twenty somethings who are rocking the space.

www.guruji.com is "google" a la Indian style. Touted as the first real Indian search engine, it has been started to two IIT grads with a VC funding of about $7 million. Right now you can check the beta version which is already working. There are plans to release the search engine in other Indian languages also.Basically, it focuses on the Indian middle class which is internet savvy and is expected to increase the usage of internet for localized searches.

A query on “Mahatma Gandhi” on Guruji.com gives about 99,000 results wheras the same query gives 5100,000 results on google. But the point which guruji wants to drive home is that these 99000 results will have more India relevant searches as compared to google searches. The USP has been defined well but how good it works in terms of commercial success still remains to be seen.

What www.guruji.com is to google, www.yaari.com is to orkut. This has been founded again by two young entrepreneurs who are making it India’s social networking site on the lines of orkut. Definitely a great challenge but only time will tell whether yaari.com can make a dent in orkut’s empire.

As the Indians become affluent and start traveling both for business and pleasure, there are new companies coming into fray to get a pie of travellers’ pocket. On one hand is www.oktatabyebye.com which is an online travel community, and on the other hand is immensely popular www.makemytrip.com which is like one stop solution to all your travel needs.

Rumours are that Sabeer Bhatia of hotmail fame is reviving its old company www.aarzoo.com with a fresh look and guess what? It is also talked to be in the travel and hospitality sector.

Last but not the least, there is www.edukitelearning.com with a completely different concept. It has been started by two IIM graduates and they claim to provide education in a very innovative way using information technology to the students worldwide.

Still a long way to go but whatever the results may be, the sheer enormity of vision and task make their efforts hugely commendable. May the deserving persons win!

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