Prabhasakshi praised by Microsoft Corporation

Microsoft Corporation's website bhashaindia.com has featured my Hindi portal Prabhasakshi (A Morarka group enterprise) as the site of the week. They have come up with an extensive article on the portal and have showered lavish praise on it. This is a great recognition of my and my team's work as well as my company's contribution to the Hindi language and Hindi computing. 

The article can be read here: www.bhashaindia.com/SoW/site_review.aspx?id=15

The article goes like this: 

Prabhasakshi.com, a Hindi portal promoted and developed by Dwarikesh Samvad Limited, was launched on Oct. 26th, 2001 

www.prabhasakshi.com 

Review of the site 
The Hindi Portal Prabhasakshi.com is a very impressive portal and one of the most comprehensive portals in Hindi. The portal targets all streams of Hindi readers and takes proper care to cater to their needs. The most striking feature of the portal is its comprehensiveness. Every section of the portal, whether it be News or other features, is rich with a variety of content. The portal was envisioned by Mr. Gautam Morarka, a great lover of the Hindi language. He is the CMD of the Dwarikesh group, whose vision was transformed into reality by Mr.Balendu Dadhich and his team of young professionals.

The prabhasakshi.com portal strives to serve as a large storehouse of Hindi content, in a format that can be easily read, stored, reused and transmitted over the Internet especially by the lovers of the language spread across the globe.

The portal was launched with an initial focus on 'News' alone. Later its scope was widened to include, as many as 21 channels completely dedicated to leisure reading. They include Cinema, Politics, Hindi Literature, Health, Music, Tourism, Women, Youth, and Kids etc. Apart from these, the portal offers News in five different categories: National, International, Sports, Business and Regional. Prabhasakshi lays emphasis on fast, accurate and in-depth delivery of news to its surfers, most of whom are NRIs and people living in small towns.

The News section comprises of various sub-sections such as national, international, regional, business and sports, each having its own homepage. The individual home pages display main news, leads, quotes and are very well supported by attractive layout and bold fonts. A very notable feature is that the portal gives due importance to international and business news which is rarely found in Hindi sites. Almost all the sections are updated periodically and sections like feature news and stories are updated in proper order of prominence.

Prominent columnists add more to the site by their contribution which attracts the readers. Prabhasakshi has top Hindi journalists and writers penning for the portal, including veteran journalist and editor Mr. Kuldeep Nayar, former Union Minister and noted psychologist Mr.Arun Nehru, parliamentarians and former editors Mr. Dinanath Mishra and Mr. Rajnath Singh. The renowned Hindi cartoonist, Mr. Kaak is a part of Prabhasakshi team as well.


Balendu Dadhich, the Managing Editor cum Technical Head of the portal says, “When we started, IT development in Hindi was fraught with problems and challenges of all kind. But we could deal with the situation with our continued patience and commitment. Various works-around were found to deal with the problems and finally we were able to put together a reliable product”. Mr. Dadhich, feels things are a lot brighter now as Microsoft’s new Office Hindi software and increasing adaptability of Unicode standard has changed the scenario completely.


On the technical front, Prabhasakshi adopts Microsoft’s .NET technology. Prabhasakshi’s .NET version was launched as early as August 2002. For storage of content, it uses the friendlier XML format, which is now getting more and more popular. Prabhasakshi and its related websites are almost free of display related problems that dog Hindi websites, such as incorrect or broken text. 

Prabhasakshi is also known for its associate websites launched from time to time, to provide extended coverage of special events. They have launched www.loksabhachunav.com that provides widespread coverage of India’s Lok Sabha elections. Other such associate websites that the portal provides are on Emergency of 1975, the last World Cup Cricket, the historical elections of Uttar Pradesh (2002), the Union Budget etc. 

prabhasakshi.com can be accessed at http://www.prabhasakshi.com 

(Curtsey: www.bhashaindia.com)

Thanks Microsoft and Bhashaindia for your encouragement- Balendu Sharma Dadhich