Now, multi-language portal for students

A multi-lingual portal has drawn up ambitious plans to engage over 10 lakh students nationwide to enhance usage of Indian languages among them.

A multi-lingual portal has drawn up ambitious plans to engage over 10 lakh students nationwide to enhance usage of Indian languages among them.

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Pankaj Jain, chief operating officer of Webdunia, told PTI that it was spreading the use of Internet among those who love to read and communicate in their own mother tongue by engaging youth spread over 50 key cities in schools, colleges and places of learning.

"Through lively interactive sessions, Webdunia plans to nurture interest and enhance usage of Indian languages, especially Marathi, among students. The ease of use of quality content like news, sports and literature, including classics will be demonstrated in these interactive sessions," the COO of the Indore-based portal said.

"The portal will hold live demonstrations to show how easy it is to use Indian language email. The technology developed by Webdunia will do away with the need to download fonts. All you need is a standard English computer and a regular keyboard to key in text in the language of your choice," Jain said.

Webdunia would also allow students to input text in the phonetic way and through different scripts according to their requirement.

"Webdunia has developed an engine wherein as the learner start typing, it suggests the text. So, rather than typing the whole text, they can just pick and choose. It is a mix of predictive and auto-complete," Jain added.

"Webdunia's email service is available in Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu. The portal has gained enough experience by creating content for Webdunia and several leading multi-national portals making it the single largest repository of content creators in nine Indian languages," he claimed.

Webdunia teams are working towards ensuring that educators looking for informative and entertaining content for their learners will find the right mix at the portal.

"Already, the portal is a preferred site for students as since 2000 it has been making available school board and university exam results on the site as soon as these are announced," the COO said.

Chief marketing officer Arpan Chatterjee said, "By creating awareness and making available relevant material in nine Indian languages simultaneously we plan to empower learners with the magic of Internet in their own language."

"Using the MyWebdunia blog the principals will be able to set up their own school or college home pages complete with text and visuals," Jain said.