Apart from these news alliances, the site features the finance site Equitymaster.com, alumnus locator Batchmates.com, city specific information provider, Chennaionline, film information sites Moviemasala.com and Indiafm.com (which is part of the Hungama.com family) among others.

Though Microsoft officials declined to comment, the portal seems to have made rapid strides since its inception a couple of months ago. Senior officials at MSN said they were not in a position to disclose the nature of these partnerships until the site was officially launched.

Some of the channel partners when contacted said that the arrangement wasa non-exclusive one and did not involve any equity participation. However they did not rule out equity participation in the long run.

MSN seems to be sticking to the content aggregator model, which involves tie-ups with various channel partners for content which will draw eyeballs to the site. Other international sites like Yahoo! also appear to be following the aggregator model to establish a presence in India.

Other Indian channel partners who wished to remain unidentified said the partnership was a non-exclusive one whereby their content could also be featured on other portals.

Interestingly, the link to the Hindu on MSN takes the user to pages which are evidently shared by both Indiaserver (a US based horizontal India-specific portal) and MSN since these pages provide links back to both portals. Curiously, however, these pages also explicitly state that all rights to the content on the page belong jointly to The Hindu and Tribeca Internet Initiatives (the company which has promoted Indiaserver). MSNofficials declined to comment on the nature of the arrangement.