Monday, December 10, 2001		Article

Delhi girl in cyber ‘match-fixing’
Peeyush Agnihotri

A BACHELOR is a man who comes to work each morning from a different direction, Sholom Aleichem, a Russian author, once said. And the Internet is giving bachelors enough leverage to date and get 'attached.' Probably this is what prompted a New Delhi girl, Anju Gulati, now an NRI living in Washington D.C. area, to create Singlesburg.com, a portal for bachelors and singles.

The portal, www.singlesburg.com, which specialises in match fixing of a different kind, was launched last week. Anju, who has done her bachelors degree in speech communication from George Mason University and likes to call her portal a virtual city of singles, says: "Our portal and singles database currently serves over 125 singles and partner sites on the Internet. New members can register online and search for that someone special. The membership approach is simple. A new profile can be added to the network for free. Paid memberships enable the members to receive e-mails in their inbox when found during online searches by others."

When asked about what prompted her to launch a site in this era of recession when dot.com are falling like ninepins, this NRI who is also an owning partner of G & G Infotech Services Pvt Ltd, New Delhi, remarks that portals that cater to the needs of the consumer on the Internet will always do well. "The dot com bust has been largely due to companies not being able to correctly define the connections between customer targeting, investment levels, and the quality of market conditions so as to correctly manage cash flow and avoid such issues," she adds.

Memberships on site exist for one-month, six months, a year, and lifetime. New members can also add their profile for free, upon which they receive a numeric password that is used with their e-mail address to log in. This way, members can use the portal and understand its offerings before making a financial commitment to upgrade.

For Indians, a rupee payment plan by demand draft has been made available for individuals not having international credit cards or the ability to pay in US dollars.

This 'single' site is an international portal accessed from over 125+ different sites on the Internet, each site marketed to a specific ethnicity or geographic location. It also provides a detailed index of its partnering sites covering many different regions and ethnicities, including African, Australian, Indian and Oriental.