Police arrest Guruji CEO
By Shalini Singh

In 2006, Techgoss had interviewed two bright IIT trained techies Anurag Dod and Gaurav Mishra who had given up successful careers in USA to come home and build India’s first search engine Guruji.  Sequoia had invested Rs. 30 Crore in Anurag and Gaurav’s project and the future looked bright. Sadly, many things did not work out. Now Guruji is facing its biggest challenge.

In Dec, 2008, Techgoss had reported how Bangalore-based Guruji has lost half its founding team with Chief Operating Officer and Founder, Gaurav Mishra, walking away from his baby.

In April, 2009, Guruji President Dhruv Shenoy put in his papers.

All the while, Google India and Yahoo India were adding new features to ensure Guruji was kept out of the lucrative Indian search market. At many levels, JustDial was also competing with Guruji.  Guruji itself adapted by concentrating more on searches for Indian music.

Now Guruji has hit a major roadblock.  Medianama is exclusively reporting :

“
Anurag Dod, CEO of Guruji.com, along-with other executives, were arrested in Bangalore yesterday (April 29,2010), on charges of making available the copies of the copyrighted musical works owned by T-Series (Super Cassettes Industries Ltd). The FIR (First Information Report) registered in Bangalore states that this is “for infringement and displaying in Guruji.com web site film songs of 1) Om Shanthi Om 2) All the best 3) Bhool Bhulaiya 4) Apka Suroor 5) Aashiq Banaya Apne which belong to Super Cassettes Industries Ltd Copy Right Owner Ship”.
“

(Techgoss had run the following story on April 2, 2009)

President quits Guruji
By Shalini Singh

Indian search engine Guruji has just had another high profile exit.

Medianama is reporting that Guruji President Dhruv Shenoy has resigned. Medianama says: “Dhruv Shenoy, President at Guruji has resigned citing personal reasons, and has moved back to Hyderabad. Shenoy confirmed the development to MediaNama. He had joined Guruji just a couple of months ago. Shenoy feels that the company is on the right track. He has not yet finalised his next move.”

This leaves Guruji Founder and CEO, Anurag Dod, to steer the search engine till a suitable replacement is found.

The Guruji website describes his background and work experience as “Dhruvakanth B. Shenoy (Dhruv) comes with an experience of 21 years spanning FMCG sales, advertising, marketing and Profit Centre operations. Dhruv worked in TGL Quick Foods and BatesClarion before moving to Ogilvy Advertising in Bangalore where he led the account management team on Allen Solly and IBM. He joined Monsterindia.com in November 2000 as Vice President of Marketing, and spearheaded all consumer / employer marketing and alliance partnership initiatives. His last assignment before joining Guruji was a 2 ½ year stint as Country Manager of Monster Middle East. Dhruv holds a post-graduate degree in management from SV University, Tirupati.”

Officially,  Dhruv has resigned due to ‘personal reasons’ which is usually code for either professional differences with investors and other senior managers and/or being promised some things which were not delivered after joining Guruji.

(Techgoss had run the following story on Dec 24, 2008)

Goodbye Guruji
By Shalini Singh

Indian search engine Guruji has lost half its founding team with Chief Operating Officer and Founder, Gaurav Mishra, walking away from the team.  Gaurav has more than 10 years in the software development cycle and had worked for a number of international companies like Microsoft and Nokia before starting Guruji. An IIT graduate, Gaurav has a Masters of Science from the State University of New York.

Sequoia Capital had invested 30 crore into the Guruji concept in 2006.   Google and Yahoo countered the great Guruji idea of a local search engine by starting their own versions as well. 

Techgoss hears that Sequoia Capital was pushing for drastic changes in Guruji more than a month ago.  A few key Sequoia players are convinced that it may not be worth their while to pour money and resources into Guruji in this tough economic climate.  And all this resulted in Gaurav walking rather than being pushed out.  According to insiders it was a something Gaurav mulled over many days before deciding to leave.

In 2006, Gaurav had told techgoss:  “I think the challenges are always evolving. We had the challenge to convince the investors, then we had a challenging time hiring the best and brightest to dream with us...but every challenge has brought us rewards at the end as we have stuck to our task. We still have long ways to go and we are still only at the start of this journey. “

Anurag Dod is the other founder and will continue with Guruji.

Gaurav will be sorely missed as his skill sets were absolutely critical to the organization. 

Guruji has tried to keep this exit as low profile as possible.  The Guruji website has no mention of Gaurav’s exit and continues to list him as their current Founder and COO.