Sunil Gavaskar and Yahoo! India team up

Company Release, January 10

MUMBAI

Yahoo! India, the leading Internet communications and Media Company, has tied up with India’s little master and cricket legend, Sunil Gavaskar. Now, cricket buffs will be privy to Gavaskar’s candid comments, insightful articles and incisive analysis and what’s more a user will be able to pose cricket related queries to him and may even win a meeting with the legend himself, all this and more are planned exclusively on Yahoo! India Cricket. With this venture, Sunil Gavaskar and Yahoo! India have opened a new innings on web as well as on Mobile.

Hutch has partnered with Yahoo! India to present the cricket action online throughout the year.

Yahoo! India has introduced some exciting new features on its site, one of them being Podcasting. For the first time in India, and perhaps in the cricketing world, podcasts will be available to cricket aficionados to download and listen to at their convenience. You can hear Sunil Gavaskar podcasting only on Yahoo! India Cricket. What’s more, this fabulous offering is not restricted only to the web but will also be available on Yahoo! India’s popular WAP site shortly, which could be accessed through GPRS enabled handsets. To access the WAP site, the user needs to log in to in.wap.yahoo.com through a GPRS enabled handset or simply sms YCRI to 8243.

On the occasion of the tie-up, Mr. Gavaskar said, “Writing & interacting with users of the web certainly sounds exciting and challenging. The web with its inherent strengths has evolved over the years to become a formidable medium. Yahoo the global leader is also the official FIFA partner. Naturally, it brings in volumes of sports lovers to its site. I hope to reach and connect with this audience and spread cricket as a sport through Yahoo!”

Mr. Neville Taraporewala, Director and Country General Manager, Yahoo! India, said, “Sunil Gavaskar is the most recognized and respected Indian sports personality across the world. His knowledge of the game is impeccable and his views and comments are most sought-after. A tie-up with Mr. Gavaskar is sure to garner us more audiences and make us the premier website for cricket-related information in India and the world over.”

The site will also include a ‘Series Specials’ written in an autobiographical format by Mr. Gavaskar himself. This exclusive section on Yahoo! India Cricket would deal with Mr. Gavaskar’s experience of playing against various opponents. Nowhere else will such insights be available over a sustained period of time. The site will also include a Q&A session wherein Mr. Gavaskar, for the first time on the web would personally answer cricket-related queries for the public at large. Users can email their questions to jiyocricket@yahoo.co.in. The site also features an exciting game called ‘Strategy Game’, which tests your cricketing acumen to the max and keeps you engrossed for long.

Yahoo! India also provides ball by ball updates on Mobile through SMS, through its popular shortcode 8243. To get updates and participate in the unique ‘reach for century’ contest during the upcoming India-Pakistan series, sms cri to 8243.

Yahoo! India’s tie-up with Sunny sure looks like a master stroke!

Yahoo! India (www.yahoo.co.in), launched in June 2000, is an Internet guide designed for netizens in India and for users abroad with special interest in India. To meet the needs of local consumers, Yahoo! India offers comprehensive local and global information in the areas of news, finance, cricket, mobile, movies, jobs and greetings. Today Yahoo! India has an enviable client list comprising of leading advertisers and corporate clients across a host of industries and has a robust and fast growing business in Wireless services enabling several of its offering through leading network operators.

Yahoo! India has established itself as the pioneering and leading Internet portal providing value added services to mobile phone users across the country through SMS and WAP/GPRS. Yahoo! India Mobile currently reaches out to over sixty million mobile subscribers through leading cellular operators in India including Aircel, Airtel, BPL Mobile, BSNL, Hutch, Idea Cellular, MTNL(Mumbai), TATA Indicom, Reliance GSM, Reliance India Mobile, and Spice Telecom.

Yahoo! India’s unique offerings to the mobile customer include services like the highly popular Y! Messenger through SMS, Y! Mail for SMS, Y! PC2Mobile, Polyphonic Tunes, Wallpapers, Java Games, Ringtones, Cricket and a host of other services. The product range is continuously being expanded and we have the distinction of launching a new SMS application every fortnight.

Users can avail of our services through our two short codes - 8242 (for Y! Messenger) & 8243 (for rest of the Y! SMS services).

For further information, please contact:

Sarika Salian

Perfect Relations

Tel: 022- 2436 7155/ 98219 06655