Yahoo! India, the largest Internet brand, has introduced a new service for the first time in India – maps in local Indian languages and walking directions. This is available on its existing Yahoo! India maps at http://in.maps.yahoo.com. The enhancements reflect Yahoo!’s goal to become the leading starting point for consumers on the Web. Localization of Yahoo! India Maps will enable a large community of new users to come online.

Yahoo! India Maps is now available in 9 local and popular languages. Apart from English, users can also experience it in Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Punjabi.

After recently introducing driving directions, Yahoo! India is offering the option of walking directions. Users can walk to their destinations with a simple walking route. These directions can be sent to a mobile phone as an SMS. There is also an option to pan and zoom to any point on the map, save it as an image and share it with others.

If a user is visiting a city for the first time and is aware of one prominent landmark, it is still possible to reach the desired destination by using walking directions. Besides providing key landmarks along the route (ATMs, hospitals, etc.), walking directions also provide clarity on every major turn.

Yahoo! India users can search for directions across 179 cities, 4,767 towns, and 226,114 villages. Users can also search for over 3 million points of interest already marked by Internet users from around the web.

Gopal Krishna, Head of Audience, Yahoo! India, said “At Yahoo! India, we are constantly developing innovative products and services that provide compelling experiences to our users. For the first time in India, walking directions and maps in local languages are being introduced by Yahoo! India. This aligns well with Yahoo! India’s overall strategy of enabling more users to experience the Internet on a PC or Mobile.”

Yahoo! India Maps (beta) was launched in April 2007 and is a Web 2.0 product built out of Yahoo!’s R&D centre in Bangalore. 

Sourced From: Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide