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A tryst with virtual history of world events and personalities -- Mahatma missing in portal floated by Gujarat co

Vinod Mathew

AHMEDABAD, Aug. 28

IT is a far-out effort at surfing virtual history, where the icons you come across range from Jesus Christ and Vivekananda at one end of the spectrum, while you have Bill Gates and our own Dhirubhai Ambani at the other end.

The portal, topcassette.com, is a newly-launched one from the land of Mahatma Gandhi. Surprisingly, Gandhi finds no space among the 50 personalities chosen from fields as diverse as current affairs, history, psychology, religion, science, philosophy, art , ancient kingdoms and literateurs.

The collage of personalities posted on the portal include the Hindu God, Krishna, Buddha, Princess Diana, Charles Darwin, Khalil Gibran, J. Krishnamurti, Napoleon Bonaparte, Isaac Newton, Socrates, Plato, William Shakespeare, Pablo Picasso, Sigmund Freud , B. F. Skinner, Emperor Akbar and Charlie Chaplin.

The biographies, along with a separate subsection on religion, provides 700 shlokas on Bhagawad Gita in Sanskrit and English, 7,000 pages on the New Testament from The Bible and 8,000 pages from the holy Koran. All these add up to one lakh pages.

Each of the 50 figures are thumb-sketched with their milestone achievements, marking out each page. In the case of Adolf Hitler, the biography has been sub-divided into four sections: Child-Youth; Nazi Party; Love Life; and German Dictator.

In the case of the religious personalities and philosophers, the portal provides a number of their quotations.

Promoted by the five-year-old Top Cassettes Ltd, which had a turnover of Rs. 17 crores in 1999-2000 and a net profit of Rs. 2.15 crores from the sale of audio cassettes alone, the portal is expected to add to the synergy of the Ahmedabad-based company. T his is expected to come primarily from the new businesses of CDs, VCDs and books which encapsulate the lives of many historical figures mentioned above, with the current year targeting a sale of over Rs. 50 crores.

``We have set up a wholly-owned subsidiary Top Multi Media Inc in the US and not less than 70 per cent of the current year's business is expected to accrue from exports to the US and UK. The company is at an advanced stage of clinching an umbrella deal f or our products with 150 libraries in the US.

``Moreover, we have sought the RBI permission to set up another subsidiary in Mauritius for replication of CDs and cassettes in French, which is a major market. Our CDs are condensed to 240 minutes and are of the interactive variety with navigation facil ities,'' said Ms. Usha Singh, Director, Top Cassettes.

Just as the portal is beginning to attract attention with its unique content and style of presentation, the company is also poised to tie up with either ICICI Ltd or SIDBI for providing e-tailing options for its own CDs and books.

With over 10,000 in-house sketches and an educational sub-section for children on a number of topics of daily reference, the erstwhile audio cassette company has been emboldened to offer services in happening areas like Web development, e-com solutions a nd software development and customisation.