WHEN the chief of Mudra Communications’ MagIndia.com came to us with the cheery news that the site had won 50 awards this year, we were sceptical.

Fifty? Give us a break. That’s more than the awards won by The Sound of Music, Gandhi, Schindler’s List and The Gladiator put together. But then, we realised that Net awards are nothing like the Oscars.

Or the Booker, or Miss World or any other award we’re accustomed to. Like the Internet itself, they are a whole new paradigm.

There are hundreds of awards going around on the Net and most of them have been set up with the altruistic motive of promoting the medium’s usage.

There are sites focused on keeping you informed about the awards waiting to be won. Some are even devoted to grading them according to merit. And unlike the Oscars, you have to go out there and nominate yourself.

Mudra’s quest for awards began at the site awardsites.Com, whose motto is “bettering the net by striving for excellence.” The first award Magindia won was The Golden Web Award, in November and it’s been on the award trail ever since, winning 50 of the 70 awards it has applied for.

Says Magindia chief R Venkata Kesavan, “It takes us one day per month to search and apply for new awards and the effort is worth it. The day we win the award, we get at least 100 new hits. We’re surprised that more Indian companies are not using the award route to promote themselves.”

Factors given weightage in Net awards is creativity, frequency of update, download speed, programming and how well it pops up in a search engine.

Awardsites lists over 1,800 awards available in a number of categories, from art, sports, travel, fashion, fantasy and entertainment to business, education, health and media.

Says Venkata Kesavan, “There are millions of sites on the Net and only 0.5 per cent of them ever receive awards. And most of the awards come from the US, Europe and Australia.”

Kesavan himself is ardent follower of award winning sites, checking the competition out on a regular basis. Magindia has now restricted its application to what awardsites insists as Level 3 awards, which are the toughest.

Winning 100 Level 3 would get Magindia into the awardsite Hall of Fame, which shouldn’t be too difficult, given that it has already reached the half way mark.

Following the Olympics style, Net awards are often in the form of bronze (a score of 80-85), silver (85-90 and gold (90-100). Award winning sites receive online citations , which give both the awarder and awardee mutually beneficial publicity.

Magindia has listed all its awards on its site, which inlude names like the Critical Mass Award, Top site Award, Stellar Site Award, Steel Website Award, The Spinder Award, Good Start Award and Blue Award for Excellence.

The individual award sites, in turn, list Magindia as an awardee, gaining it some much needed hits.

Now Mudra Communications itself is preparing to institute a series of awards for Indian websites in various business categories. In these otherwise dull times, this should hopefully enthuse Indian webmasters to upgrade their sites.

Dedicated to providing information on Indian advertising, Magindia employs a team of 12 people in Ahmedabad and logged in a revenue of Rs 50 lakh last year, This year, it has targetted Rs one crore.

Most of the site’s users and clients of the parent advertising agency, though it is now exploring new avenues like business schools, who will be offered access to its data for an annual fee of Rs 10,000.

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