According to Asis Dasgupta, the man behind the mega portal for women, when CG launched the user-friendly, interactive website, it had major expansion plans in mind. It took about two months to design a dozen channels, Dasgupta added. He said looking at the kind of response on the inaugural day, he felt that CG needed to pack more stuff at a much faster pace.

At present, he said the portal provided online aptitude tests, career counselling and help-line to answer personal queries on home, family, health, legal affairs, social and marital life. It was primarily to take this further that the company was planning to add the new channels mentioned earlier.

Talking to The Financial Express, he said the endeavour was not just a Rs 1,790-crore corporate house's annual tribute to the Indian woman, but it intended to remain a constant companion to half of the country's population.Dasgupta said that it was not just a site for the socialites to whet their appetite for the latest style or fashion, but it aimed at meeting the mundane needs of the whole cross-section of women.

The wide variety of questions put before the celebrities on the inaugural day's chat show, he pointed out, gave the company an insight as to what more information and data needed to be loaded onto the website to meet the needs of the vast audience.

Dasgupta admitted that a site, cyberlaunched by Andhra Pradesh CEO Chandrababu Naidu with a host of top professionals replying to queries was bound to draw hits. However, he added in the same breath, that the questioners were real women who showed concern, anguish and hope for the future.

The participants in the chat show included top achievers like Kiran Bedi, Reena Ramchandran (HOCL), Meenakshi Madhvani (Carat India), Reena Joshi (McKinsey), Ivy Mukherjee (KPMG), acedemics like Snehalata Deshmukh (Mumbai University), Mariamma Varghese (SNDT) Minakshi Mitra (Lyons, France), Vimla Patil, actress Archana Puran Singh, Monalisa (L'Oreal), Karen Anand (Food Specialist), Neera Nath (NIFT) and Deepika (Feminine Forte). There was a fair sprinkling of men achievers too, like Jitendra Bhargava (Air India), Ashok Basak (MSEB) and Cyrus Broacha (VJ).

Dasgupta, who is also the senior general manager of the communication and market support (CMS) division, explained the groups' philosophy behind the foray into the portal business saying that, historically, the Indian women, comprising 8.5 per cent of the world population, had played a very significant role in the development of the society and as responsible citizens themselves. The company aimed to contribute its mite to the cause of the Indian women by creating a portal for their development, he added.

He said the portal had different channels for different age-groups, like contests and interviews with college student wannabes and career opportunities and openings for even housewives in the 25-40 year age-group.

As to how the company planned to make the portal commercially viable, he said, the plan was to take some of the channels into e-commerce. Having already built a base for nationwide issues, the accent would now be on regional inputs thenceforth, he added.