Advertisment

CyberAstro hits the nail with Kashmir issue

author-image
DQW Bureau
New Update

Pragati Simlote

Advertisment

Looks like astrology is not just about star gazing. Things also come true, at least some times. The predictions of CyberAstro, an online astrology site which is also a Cyber Media Group company, are coming true with the steps taken by the Indian government to find a peaceful solution to the Kashmir issue.

According to the site--www.cyberastro.com--the Central Government will be extensively occupied in dealing with terrorist activities and in responding to the proxy war with Pakistan, till May 2000. As we have seen India had declared a unilateral truce towards the end of 2000 and Pakistan also responded favorably. Also with the Hurriyat leaders going to Pakistan for talks, peace in Kashmir does not look like a distant dream. The site now predicts that between May 2002 and April 2003 India will initiate concrete steps to solve the Kashmir and the North-East problem.

Another prediction was that the government will face serious trade union problems and labor unrest till 2000. This has also came true with the agitation of the polluting units in the Capital facing closure of their business units, labor unrest in Maruti Udyog, and the infamous unrest by telecom employees against the corporatization of the erstwhile DoT.

Advertisment

Some of the predictions of the site for 2001 are as follows:

India

The site has predicted 2001 to be a very good year for India. According to the Karma Index, India will look forward to a long period of peace and prosperity, respite from insurgency, crime and terrorism.

Advertisment

Government

The Indian government also has a good year ahead. There will be a consensus between the economic reforms and labor issues by May 2002.

Atal Behari Vajpayee

Advertisment

Vajpayee's health will remain a matter of concern this year also. According to the swearing in chart of Vajpayee, he will face problems every year from April to July because of his female associates and fundamentalists. This year will also see the same.

Economy and Foreign Relations

Exports will be on the rise and foreign relations especially with the US will become better and better.

Advertisment

Budget and IT Sector

The budget will have a pro reform direction and the IT sector will be a major focus area. Taxes on consumer goods will be reduced. More taxes will be levied on the IT sector, which will have a negative impact on the share market. The major thrust this year will be on convergence and telecom instead of software.

Stock Market

Advertisment

Between July 2001 and July 2002, there is a possibility of a downturn in the Indian stock market and a temporary recession in the economy.

Cricket

For cricket the next year will remain topsy turvey as before. This situation will continue till 2002.

Advertisment

Talking about the impact of Internet on astrology and predictions, S Majumdar, CEO, CyberAstro, said that Internet has enabled personalized and interactive predictions. Now the predictions can be done on a one-to-one basis instead of generalizing it for a whole bunch of people. "But this is only possible when we can convert astrological knowledge and prediction technology into a software." The astrology software used by CyberAstro has been developed

inhouse.

Three databases are used at the time of prediction. The first one is a comprehensive atlas consisting of databases of three million cities all over the world, which provides their latitudinal and longitudinal positions. The second database consists of the position of all the planets at all times of the day for the years 1850 to 2050. This is used to calculate local time from the GMT for different cities. The third is a database of 70,000 names.

CyberAstro was started in 1998 with an initial investment of Rs 20 lakh. Presently it has a team of 18 members consisting of five astrologers. There are around 70,000 club CyberAstro members across 151 countries. According to Majumdar, it will break even in another two to three months.

The revenue model of CyberAstro consists of content selling, paid services, etc. After the recent failure of the dotcoms, which depended heavily on advertising revenues, this is one site that is striving to find new revenue models. In future, all the services on the site will be charged. Talking about the expansion plans, he said that talks are going on for a brick and mortar model with the cyber cafes. The cyber cafes will do the transactions on behalf of CyberAstro where the customer can come and collect his predictions by hand. This will also help in breaking the barrier of low credit card penetration.

Majumdar said that they will also be introducing two new instant products next month--online astrological remedy and exam report. These will be paid services. In addition, two new products will also launch on the Valentine's Day. The first service will tell the user the supporting and the challenging planets towards the relationship. Another service will tell the user how his/her valentine will look like based on their astrological charts.

(CNS)

Advertisment