Asklaila.com Team Blog

So we are bringing asklaila to all possible mediums and here is one more you can use. You can post all your Bangalore local info questions to us. Our twitter address is http://twitter.com/namma_bangalore and one of our friendly City Jockeys will find you the best answer. Besides that you also get free updates on hot and happening in town. So keep tweeting and keep asking laila. Currently this is on for Bangalore and other cities are coming soon.

We have been trying to bring Laila to life on various mediums. We have already covered Web (Website, Widgets, Search Bar), Mobile (SMS, WAP, USSD) and TV in lot of it’s forms. Now Laila is coming over to you on favourite messengers/Chat Clients.

Yahoo Messenger
Add asklaila@yahoo.com to your friend list on your messenger and just get started. More details from Yahoo on how to add a friend are available at http://help.yahoo.com/l/ca/yahoo/pager/use/use-03.html.

Gtalk/Gmail
Add asklaila@bot.im as your friend list and get started. More details on how to add friends can be found at http://www.google.com/talk/start.html.

Few things you need to remember when you chat with Laila
- Start with a “hi” or “hello” just to break the ice.
- You can always type “help” for getting help from Laila.
- Laila needs to know your city. Just type “select ”. Eg. “select Mumbai”
- The format of the query is simple – query, location. Just to explain with few examples – “pizza, bandra”
- If you thought Laila knows only about business, you were wrong. You can also ask Laila about movies and events. Eg. “painting exhibition, jayanagar” or “Dev D, Noida”
- Getting more results is as simple as typing “m”
- You can always click on the URL to see more details about on our site
- All (almost) girls love gentle language, just be kind.

Actually why the name asklaila?
No one amongst us knew that this one question would need so much explanation, even after 2 years of starting up.
When we started up we knew that our business will be all about local information, and how well and efficiently we expose that information to the seekers. So there we were - working non-stop, defining the product and the usability, features and security, scalability and performance, uptime and scalability and all that jazz. And of course, a name!

The developers (4 in number then) were least concerned with the name, but the CXOs won’t let us rest without coming up with some. And then they would choose the best of the lot. Amogh had a natural instinct of coming up with the weirdest names and he came up with a list of names, which he thought were suitable for our baby. His list reads: searchwala.com, merafind.com, sahihey.com, sefigo.com(SEarchFIndGo), jstfnd.com and some others. Birla congratulated Amogh for his creativity for SEFIGO.com and topped him by suggesting sahibatao.com.

Some other names were toyed with in the meanwhile, 58989.com being the one which was closest to become the ONE name everyone agreed upon. Why 58989? Because that would be the sms shortcode for using our local search service. And we could not violently react against the bland website name 58989.com, naturally, who can hate a number? We actually got mockups from UI guys, and got our logo made for 58989.com. I thank the chinese guy who had blocked the actual domain 58989.com, and never replied to Sukrit’s emails for buying the domain.

In the meanwhile, our three CXOs were slowly nourishing their loves for 3 different website names. Kiran would not let go of totallocal.com. It was the exact name our website was all about! It was short, it was easy to remember, contained the word ‘local’, had an easy spelling and a host of other advantages. Birla was specially fond of SeFiGo.com(SEarchFIndGO), it was short too, but not too easy to remember, contained both words ’search’ and ‘find’ (although partially). But we had to convince him that you don’t want your customer to GO after they search and find. You don’t want a negative connotation in your brand name, do you?

Shriram had come up with ‘asklaila.com‘ in the same time, which was the naturally the most controversial one
Q) Why Asklaila?
A) When you want to know about a good bengali restaurant, how do you find it? Find a good beauty parlour? Search for an electrician? Which is the best gym in my locality? Naturally, you ask a friend. We wanted our service to become that one friend, who knows everything about your city, gives the best suggestions, is up-to-date, is omnipresent and is very reliable. And it doesn’t hurt if the friend is female, and has an enigmatic name The name sounds Indian, and would be good enough to take us international. asklaila.com would have an awesome recall value. People could love it or hate it, but won’t forget it!  Laila would replace the friend whom one could just call or dial for local information.

So Kiran organized a poll for the best name amongst five.  He eliminated Birla by not even having sefigo.com in the poll, smart move. To please Shriram he included only one of his own horses (totallocal.com) in the race and three of Shriram’s (asklaila.com, lailaknows.com, lailasays.com) and one neutral (4india.com, didn’t know how that cropped up). Even though he voted thrice, and we heard later that the booth was captured, in the end laila prevailed.

The pressure was too much. Almost anybody who has a Khan in his name and is in forties is doing it. We might not have Khan in our names but some of us are in forties ( not me… ).

So we launched the beta version of our service in six more cities.
1. Ahmedabad
2. Goa
3. Pune
4. Mysore
5. Jaipur
6. Coimbatore

Try out the service in these cities and let us know your feedback. 

So we have something which will make you look and feel smart on the street. How many times you land up in cities without knowing where you are and what all you can do in town. Now we have a friend to help you out in asklaila StreetSmart – our smart location aware product which works with or without GPS capability on your mobile. We use cell triangulation techniques to locate you in town (Bangalore and Delhi right now) and make your searches location aware. If you are looking at finding Pizza place close to your hotel and you have no idea which part of the town you are in (not easy for a Delhi guy to write Bommanhalli and Byatarayanapura on a trip to Bangalore anyway), you can just fire Pizza as the query and we will figure out which part of the town you are in and suggest you closest places (yes, our proximity search in action in combination with location awareness).

We do have maps integrated with search to provide you a unique way to explore your city. You can easily look for information, get it on SMS/Email or directly dial the number to reach out to the business. So what are you waiting for? If you have a windows mobile phone, you can get started at http://www.asklaila.com/LailaMobileDemo/. Don’t worry if you don’t have windows mobile or live outside Delhi and Bangalore, we are soon coming on other phones and cities. We can assure you that we will deliver you the goods worth the wait.

Man is a social animal. Woman, more so.

Life today is no longer a simple sequence of events – more often unknown and unexpected, as it used to be. The modern day ‘metrozen’ leads a life that is planned down to the last second. There are plans made, plans executed, and plans re-planned. Not being prepared for an eventuality is no longer a luxury that can be afforded. It is not just about what one is doing, but also about what the others are, and the desperate attempt to make the best of all worlds. This translates into a task that involves a fair amount of meticulous planning and preparation, which is carried out based on facts that are obtained from ‘reliable’ sources. Aunty next door knows where to get the best veggies, the watchman downstairs will tell you where to take those clothes you want ironed, and chottu upstairs may not be sure about his geography lessons, but will certainly be well informed about what movie to watch - and where. Most of it is second nature to you – you know precisely who to ask what. Indians have, since time immemorial, been brought up on a culture of advice and guidance. There is always someone to turn to when you have a question – a living, breathing someone, who you know has the answer to your question.

Being used to such a mode of modus-operandi, it is not surprising that this wealth of information which resides in the neural nooks and crannies of the social fabric has not been readily available to the seeker. This mega-mass of information is something that seems to have a life of its own. It does not reside anywhere but in the minds of its possessors, and it does not reveal itself, unless you corner it. It is to the task of making this information readily available – as readily as leaning over and tapping your friend over the shoulder to ask a question, that we at Asklaila have committed ourselves to. We ask ourselves the questions you would ask yourself. That way, we are ready with answers, whatever be your question.

Having put together this elusive goodie bag for you, our next task is to make the bag readily available – whenever you need it! After all, what good is a hammer if you don’t have it when the iron is hot and ready to be struck! (Unless you are the violent sort of person that is – in which case you are bound to come up with many more creative uses for the hammer, which we shall not delve into here, for reasons obvious). The utility value of an object – be it anything right from a tangible physical object to a piece of information, is multiplied hundredfold when it is made available at the precise moment of its requirement. Have you not often looked at that nice LCD television on sale, and wished you’d seen that ad in the paper when you were frantically searching for it, instead of now, when you’ve spent all your hard earned money on another model, and you’re accompanying your friend who is triumphantly picking up the piece, grinning at you every five minutes, rubbing it in at every occasion possible?!

Coming back to the point – what we’d like, is for you to get you what you need, when you need it. This has been the primary impetus behind our attempts at ensuring that you can reach us anytime, anywhere. There are multiple access channels that you can reach out to us on - Web, SMS and WAP. Another milestone in our journey has been the team-up with Airtel, to power their local city search experience. Airtel subscribers can now access City search on WAP, SMS, USSD and DTH TV, completely free of cost!. This partnership is no mean event, as it extends the reach of our services to over 70 million Airtel customers! We are proud of this association with the premier mobile services provider of the country – the vision of making available, at zero cost, all information the satisfied customer may require – clear in the minds of both partners. Setting ourselves apart from the traditional breed of “information dealers”, we have instead, chosen to ride the wave of technology – leveraging the best technical solutions available today to bring to you an unmatched consumer experience. As always, the more you familiarize yourself with Laila, the better and brighter are the ideas that you will come up with, in order to help us serve you better. Write to us with any suggestions or queries that you may have, and we will be happy to get back to you.

We are in the business of answers. Ask away!