By D. Murali and C. Ramesh

Chennai, May 23: Guruji.com, 'the Indian search engine', has launched Tamil search capabilities on its site, in addition to the existing Hindi, Telugu and Kannada options. In a few weeks, the site plans to add Malayalam too to its roster.

Speaking to Business Line, ahead of the official launch on Tuesday, the founders Mr Anurag Dod and Mr Gaurav Mishra said that offering vernacular search is key to expanding the Internet user base in the country. “The future is in regional languages. That’s why we are releasing one language capability after the other, in quick succession,” said Mr Mishra.

Guruji.com is planning to capitalise on the wide reach of Tamil-speaking diaspora. Around 200 million people speak Tamil in India, and an equal number, in the rest of the world. “We see a huge surge in the southern region, which makes it our focal point,” said Mr Mishra.

Mr Dod said that the response to native language search has been “tremendous and encouraging. We have logged in more than 10 million hits.”

Guruji.com is backed by Sequoia Capital, which also funded Google, the world’s most popular search engine, years ago.

The founders said that their plans for the current fiscal include adding other services, such as maps, music, and video. A plan to offer search results on the mobile platform is also on the anvil, according to Mr Mishra.