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Net Gains (Sep 08, 98) |
While India Internet World '98 was planned since December last,
a rather last minute addition to the agenda were the India Internet
Awards. These awards were announced about 10 days before the event
and were instituted jointly by the Economic Times and Microland.
In true Internet style, nominations for the awards could only
be sent in via the website (www.indiainternetawards.com). There
were awards for six categories: Most useful site, Most popular
site, Best designed site, Cyber corporate of the year, Web evangelist
of the year, and Web designer of the year.
The site made news a couple of days before the declaration of
results when the media published reports about hackers cracking
into the site and finding security loopholes and ways and means
to send in multiple nominations easily. The complete story is
archived online at : http://www.hindubusinessline.com/bline/1998/08/24/stories/14240392.htm.
The organisers got the response they were looking for though -
there were over 1500 nominations made in less than a week in different
categories.
The panel of judges included prominent personalities from India
and abroad - Sabeer Bhatia (Founder & CEO, Hotmail), Mellanie
Hills (President, Knowledgies), Crystal Waters (Internet Author
& Web Consultant), Saurabh Srivastava (President, NASSCOM),
R Gopalakrishnan (now ex-Vice Chairman, Hindustan Lever), Pradeep
Kar (Chairman & MD, Microland), Arun Arora (CEO, The Economic
Times), and Ram N Aggarwal (President, Wipro Peripherals). After
days of deliberation and scrutinising entries, the awards were
announced, a day later than earlier decided.
The Cyber Corporate of the Year award - for an Indian company
that had effectively used the Web - was jointly won by ICICI Bank
(http://www.icicibank.com/), and National Stock Exchange (http://www.nse-india.com/).
The Best Designed Website of the Year and the Most Popular Website
of the Year awards went to Rediff On The Net (http://www.rediff.com/).
The former is self-explanatory, and the latter was a visitors
choice award, where surfers voted for the sites they visited most
often.
Malay Nagda (from India Online) was voted the Best Webdesigner
of the Year from a category that had the most number of nominations.
To see some of Malay's work log onto Winjobs (http://www.winjobs.com),
CRY Online (http://www.cry.org), and ShowBizIndia (http://www.showbizindia.com).
The jury panel decided against giving out an award for the Web
Evangelist of the Year, since there was no individual who completely
met the criteria for the awards viz. someone who had pushed boundaries,
challenged mindsets, and influenced Indian Internet policies to
promote awareness and spread of the Internet in India.
The Most Useful Website of the Year award went to HomeIndia.com
for Online Post - the free email - to - mail service offered on
their site. This service was covered in this column in April,
so you can refresh your memory online.
That was the country's first public recognition of the Internet
as an industry, as well as the contributors to the growth of the
Internet in India. And with the Internet industry growing the
way it is in India, it appears that these will be annual events
eagerly looked forward to. Stay logged on …