Rediff.com has acquired a minority stake in Tachyon Technologies, a Bangalore based software company, for an undisclosed sum. A statement said that the acquisition is “part of Rediff’s efforts to boost its competitiveness by investing in start-up companies with innovative technologies that allow Rediff to provide better services for its customers”.
Tachyon 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. Ajit Balakrishnan, CEO and founder of Rediff.com, said, “We aspire to encourage promising start-ups to develop innovative world class products that support our business.”
Venki Nishtala, Chief Technology Officer of Rediff.com, said, “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 is founded by Ram Prakash H and K S Sreeram.

Business Standard adds: Nasdaq-listed Rediff may plan an India IPO, but the time frame is as big as five years. “Logically that (India IPO) should happen given that we are an Indian firm, but we have not decided the time. It will be within the next five years,” Rediff CEO Ajit Balakrishnan said. Balakrishnan also dismissed any speculations regarding selling out to AOL or Yahoo.