(19 December 2006 10:30 pm)

MUMBAI: Rediff.com India Ltd. has acquired a minority stake in Tachyon Technologies, a Bangalore-based software company for an undisclosed sum.

This is part of Rediff's strategy to invest in start-up companies with innovative technologies.

Says Rediff.com chief executive officer and founder Ajit Balakrishnan, "we aspire to encourage promising start-ups to develop innovative world class products that support our business. As a part of such efforts, we are delighted to have an opportunity to invest in a promising start-up company, such as Tachyon Technologies."

Adds Rediff.com chief technology officer Venki Nishtala added "The predictive text input technology developed by Tachyon is based on sophisticated machine learning techniques and is an improvement on simple phonetic maps and specialized language keyboards, thus enabling millions of Indians to benefit from the internet."

Tachyon Technologies has built a product named Quillpad, which enables users to type in English alphabets to input words in other languages (in the respective scripts) with ease on the basis of phonetics, allowing them to communicate in their language of choice. Rediff.com has adopted this technology in its Rediffmail email and Rediff Bol messenger service.

Commenting on the Rediff's investment in Tachyon, Tachyon Technologies CEO Ram Prakash has this to say:"Rediff.com's investment in Tachyon Technologies should provide us with the capital we need to enhance our development infrastructure. Hopefully, this will help us to realise our ultimate goal of developing great products."