Hello Surtis,

I am back again with some good news

OurSurat.com team is working hard to release beta as soon as possible and now we are very near to the release. We are doing final testing of the release. So be prepared to participate for beta very soon. Here is the rough outline what the beta edition will have:

1. Home page (English)
2. Aggregated News (Gujarati)
3. Friends (English)
4. Free Classifieds (English)

So stay tuned!

This is real start of the blog. Actually, I am not getting much time for myself to be free and type something over here

Surti’s are basically mast and bindaas people who believes in peace of mind. So they normally select doing service and stay away from tensions. While Surti’s also allowed and welcomed other people from Rajasthan and Saurashtra (All the Marvaris and the Kathiyawadis) who run businesses in surat, either in diamnods or in textile.

All these businessmen asked a same question at time of their visit of Stall # 102, at IT Expo 2009 in Surat. The question was very simple: If OurSurat.com is providing everything is FREE and there is no hidden strings, What is business model for Avinashi? How Avinashi will make money out of it or run it?

It was well expected question from all businessmen of Surat. Here is the honest answer. Avinashi is the company behind OurSurat.com. Running a portal is not a easy job. Many portals were created about Surat and no-one even remember them as a past. There are several reasons why they failed but I will answer that as seperate post. But anyone can understand that running a portal will require good amount of money for buying server, manpower to maintain it, salaries for these team members and last but not the least – Continuous updates and ideas to retain the users.

So finally everything goes back to money. Without money it’s not possible to run the portal. Here is the deal Avinashi is working on. Avinashi is a software export company in Surat. Most of you may even not hear about that in last 5 years. Yes, Avinashi is 5 year old company having head office in Surat and leading player in Rich Internet Application development market.  We do business worldwide but all the brains (Team members) are Surti’s only! And it is very hard to build a great team. Even sometimes candidates are good and convinced to join the company and try to work on something different than traditional company’s do. But parent’s are not aware about the brand Avinashi. So even though we are offering 25000 salary in Surat, and other brands like Reliance etc., are offering lower salaries, Parents will still force their Son / Daughter to join branded company. Why? because, Avinashi is not well known brand in Surat.

Okay, So now next question comes – How OurSurat.com will solve your brand problem?

Making brand is not a joke or a short term process. It takes reasonable time and very high costs. So it might take 2-20 lacs of rupees per annum based on how big brand you would like to build. So Avinashi thought a way, where it can make a brand and at a same time It can give something back to the society! Yeah, myself – I am son of farmer, Arrived from Saurashtra. Surat gave us everything we need and now its my time to give something back to it. But of course, I am not multi billionar person. What I have is skills and technology knowledge that I serve to my clients in USA, UK, Europe and other corners of globe. So I want to help Surat by my knowledge. Just knowledge is not important but you will also need money. So my company Avinashi will invest the marketing / branding budget in OurSurat.com and If the portal will help people, Brand will be there automatically.

So as very short answer, Avinashi will invest its branding money into OurSurat.com and it will serve Surti’s for all their needs. By providing most of services FREE, It will serve purpose of Giving back to society as well as Branding by providing them best services.