Rediff India buys stake in Tachyon
Mr Ajit Balakrishnan (left), Founder and CEO, Rediff.com, and Mr Ramprakash H., Managing Director, Tachyon Technologies, at a press conference in Bangalore on Tuesday. – G. R. N. Somashekar
Bangalore, Dec 19
Imagine sending e-mail in one’s mother tongue, using an English keyboard. It is possible on the Internet portal Rediff.com.
Rediff India Ltd has bought a minority stake for an undisclosed sum in the Bangalore-based Tachyon Technologies, which has developed a product named `Quillpad’ that enables users to send e-mails in their mother tongue.
The phonetically-driven Quillpad enables users to send e-mails in six regional languages, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Hindi and Marathi at present. To type a word, which comes phonetically close to a local language, all that the user needs to know is the English alphabet. Rediff has adopted the Quillpad technology in its Rediffmail e-mail and Rediff Bol messenger service.
Quillpad technology
"We aspire to encourage promising start-ups to develop innovative world class products that support our business," Mr Ajit Balakrishnan, CEO and Founder of Rediff.com, said.
Mr Venki Nishtala, CTO, Rediff.com, said, "We believe enhanced Indian language use capability through Tachyon’s software can help fuel product innovation. The predictive text input technology developed by Tachyon is based on sophisticated machine learning techniques and is an improvement on simple phonetics maps an specialised language keyboards".
Rediff’s investment will "provide us with the capital we need to enhance our development infrastructure," the Tachyon Chief Executive Officer, Mr H. Ram Prakash said.
Tachyon, founded by Mr Ram Prakash H. and Mr K.S. Sreeram in 2000, is working on products in the areas of machine learning, computer networking and programming languages.