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Last year was a very good year for MSN India. It witnessed tremendous growth focusing on verticals like news, entertainment, lifestyle and sports.
The new MSN India home page which was launched in July last year received accolades from across the industry and was liked by our audiences. The website provides one with a gateway to MSN's internal properties and also to the communication dashboard to socialise via Windows Live, Twitter and Facebook integration. It is one of the most modern-looking homepages with modern Indian sensibilities. MSN and its users will continue to see such new initiatives and releases, not just in terms of content but also as a fully enriched bouquet of services along with Bing and Windows Live in the coming year.
This challenge and our commitment to the user were met by highly focused editorial practices, product enhancement and a great user experience. MSN India was always on top of connecting our audiences with the latest happenings in the country. With our focus on youth we have one of the best offerings in the entertainment, lifestyle and sports coverage in the industry. We launched MSN Yuva in partnership with WebDunia catering to our Hindi speaking audiences, MSN Green (as we feel sustainable and responsible living is the need of the hour), MSN Education (to help our student audiences get the best of tips and advices) and MSN Money (to bring personal finance information and tools to our audiences). Everything that we do primarily starts with meeting the needs of our audiences.
In 2011, all the initiatives that we seeded last year will continue to be our focus areas. We will drive them to the next level. MSN would want to cater to all the needs of our evolving audience - information, education, entertainment and communication. MSN, Bing, Windows Live and many more such products from Microsoft are all going to play their part in catering to the needs of the audience and give them a wonderful, enriched and connected experiences. Introduction of 3G, socially connected audiences, high mobile penetration will bring in much good news in 2011.
The introduction of 3G will be more of an opportunity than a concern. We are ready with MSN Videos and hope to see a lot of excitement in this space in 2011. MSN India videos generally carry a lot of premium content and we hope that the new high-speed, always-connected Indian ecosystem will bring in some great news for video publishers and the internet industry overall.