Q. If we talk about MSN as a portal, where do you position yourself as compared to a Yahoo! or AOL or the more 'Indian' portals like Indiatimes and Rediff?

A. Our belief is that local portals will always be stronger from an editorial viewpoint. They know the market better and they have more people. That's one end. The other end is the totally global players like Facebook or Digg. You don't really care whether they are in India or out there. We are somewhere in the middle, where we have a lot of local content. We have a number of sites in local languages. But where we bring our strength is actually the services. It's not easy to create a global, robust and secure service. We have 250 million users across the world. So, it's a mixture of content and services which is necessary to create a community. If you look at Microsoft and MSN vis-a-vis a Yahoo! or even Google, we are much more active in taking it across devices. So, in XBox Live today, you have Messenger. Using Microsoft's other strengths beyond MSN, on the XBox or mobile or IPTV – taking our content across devices is where our strength lies.

We are not trying to be the best horizontal, which has everything

Q. So, that's the global strategy, but if you look at yourself specifically in the Indian market, what you say your positioning is in the consumer's mind?

A. I don't think many of us have that position. We are still a mail-dominated market. People go to portals because they want to access e-mail. Where we would like to position ourselves is – we are not trying to be the best horizontal, which has everything which is good. For us, what is important are two or three things which we would like to be good at. Entertainment is one of them. So, Bollywood is big and it's a long struggle, but we believe that over the next two-three years, we will become the Bollywood place.

And the other one is education. Frankly, you won't find that depth of education content anywhere else. We have videos of lessons, we have online teaching – we have everything. And that is something we will continue to do.

Q. Is education your pitch for smaller towns?

A. What we launched for smaller towns was editorial in six languages. Others followed suit, but we started it. If we look at the reality of the situation, the Internet is still a big-city phenomenon. And so, one is ahead of one's time if one is trying to do that. So, at this point of time, we are still catering to a large-city audience.

Q. I ask you this because Microsoft is doing a lot for PC penetration in India...

A. We do a lot of stuff at Microsoft, we just don't call it MSN. So, the content behind the rural initiatives and the rural web – we do in the same company. So, education, yes, to some extent, was to go beyond the large cities. But again, Microsoft is in an industry that is far more mature than our industry.

Q. And what are your plans for the regional sites?

A. We do plan to increase them and cover more languages, but honestly, we need to see more traction happening in language Internet. It's not yet there where you go aggressive in any language – that's why you don't see anyone else doing it. Yes, Microsoft Office is in 14 different languages, and ideally, we (MSN) would like to be in the same languages. That's our plan, but the 'when' depends on how the market behaves.

The issue is that besides the operators, no one is making money

Q. You also emphasised the importance of services. Microsoft has Office Live and online office suites like Google Docs and Zimbra are great for consumers. But from a business point of view, what's the model there?

A. I have to first say that Office Live is not something MSN does. More and more business models are evolving in this industry. So, the licensed business model was where you pay, get a CD and download it. Now, there's the advertising business model which has happened for search etc. There is also subscription, which is pay as you go. In both advertising and subscription, we have started pilots, mostly in the developing economies. The key here is that everyone doesn't want stuff for free. If you are writing in a document and irrelevant ads start appearing, you don't like it, and you think someone is reading your stuff. There will be a set of people who will go for it and there will be people who want to pay – and they will expect security and privacy and a rich user experience. And the people who have it free will not expect that. So, you offer the same product as a software and a service and you let people choose, and I think that's what's happening everywhere.

Q. With the launch of Digital Advertising Solutions, it seems that you are getting very aggressive on sales…

A. Digital Advertising Solutions was actually launched because advertising as a business model has gone beyond the PC. We are already selling advertising on XBox games (though not in India). This includes relevant in-game ads. There's advertising which will start on the mobile, and advertising on IPTV, as and when we launch it. So, Digital Advertising Solutions actually goes across media and that's why it was created.

Q. Talking about mobile, what are your plans there? Will you take the same content (as online) to the mobile or develop a different portal?

A. The way one takes the same content to mobile is actually a set of technologies called 'adaptive rendering'. So, you take the content and render it on the mobile. I don't believe anyone has the perfect technology for this, so we won't do that. There is some stuff which will be rendered, but we would create a watermark for mobile from the perspective of content. From a services perspective, people are not going to fill long forms on the mobile. The issue is that besides the operators, no one is making money. No one has cracked the business model –- what kind of advertising, how and when to use it? – and 500 people have tried it. Hopefully, we will know what's the right thing to do.

Q. You've tied up with Hutch for Windows Live Search. Are you advertising on that platform?

A. Not yet. Hutch (now Vodafone) has been a partner with us for five years. And we are very proud because Vodafone is seen as the VAS leader. So, we have been working together before search for VAS platforms. So far, what we do is WAP and SMS search, but the monetisation bit of it, I think everyone is trying to crack.

Social networking is a big phenomenon, but the problem, I think, is that everyone sees everything

Q. Coming to social media sites, MSN still doesn't have an Orkut or a Facebook...

A. You know what the funny thing is? MSN Spaces has five times more users than Facebook. So, Facebook has about 26-30 million users and Spaces has 130 million. So, I believe we have the foundation of something big. Social networking is a big phenomenon, but the problem, I think, is that everyone sees everything. Nothing is hidden. But we need to start respecting privacy. That's why Facebook and LinkedIn are successful. We would like to operate on that model rather than the Orkut or MySpace end of the spectrum. So, it will happen. I know we are working on that. The services are there. We have a blogging platform, but yes, we don't have a social network.

Q. You have also been active on social media advertising. You have ad options on emoticons, blogs and so on. What has the response from advertisers been like?

A. Very few people know that all of Facebook advertising is sold by us across the world, as on Digg which a big Web 2.0 phenomenon. The thing with advertising on social networks is that you don't have control over the content. So, if you have content on how mobile phones are dangerous for health and you have a mobile phone appearing next to it, it doesn't make sense. So, it’s happening, but it's not as big as advertising on controlled content. People are going to be wary of that until advertising becomes so smart that it actually reads the content and does not jar with the advertising. So, it's still a little risky.

Q. I think Facebook is getting many Indian advertisers...

A. We don't sell it in India yet. It's still sold centrally from the US. Advertisers who want to buy ads on Facebook have to get in touch with the US office.

Q. Do you have a similar tie-up with Nokia?

A. No, but what we are doing with Nokia which we announced in 10 countries last month and very soon will be announcing in India, is that on all Nokia N-Series phones, the entire Windows Live suite will be in-built. It can also be downloaded over the air. So, there will be a rich Messenger service... it's a very big collaboration for us.

Thanks, Mr Bindra.

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