Navigating the Net in the wired world can lead to a wealth of information. Or, for the busy CEO, an embarrassment of trivia. To guide you through the maze of URLs, BT presents a series of smart cyber-drives through the World Wide Web to garner ideas and information that you can actually use. This fortnight: Indian corporate information.

By Vivek Bhatia

Finally, I can talk about a Website that is a highly-organised, searchable, and highquality source of information about Indian business. Yes, at the Matrix Informer (www. matrix.co.in)--run by Matrix Information Services, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kotak Mahindra Finance--you can actually research Indian companies. And I am emphasising the term research since much of the data is already available on the Internet.

There are three sources of information at Matrix: newspapers, wire services, and the databases of the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) and the Credit Rating & Information Services of India Ltd (CRISIL). News stories can be searched by publication name, headline, author, or date as well as for any word in the text. Keyword searches are, unfortunately, not possible. If you happen to be looking for something which is a common word, and has not been used in a headline, you may end up with a heap of trash.

Besides, I didn't find much scope for researching background material on any topic: most of the newspaper archives in Matrix start either in June or July this year, with the editions of only two, The Economic Times and The Times Of India, being filed from January, 1997. The results of searches are presented as a list of links with the headlines displayed where clicking on the headline will bring up the full text of the news story--and cost you Rs 10 per story.

The data on company finances and projects has been culled from the cmie, and is the same as that available in the latter's database products like Prowess and cimm. You can search for a company by name, ownership, industry, sales, or net profits. Both reports on a company's financials and equity holdings, as well as the texts of the directors' and auditors' reports, are available. An interesting option is a project-tracker, which can be searched by project type and product, and will provide details--including capacities, dates, and investments--from a database of over 4,000 projects.

While Matrix sells CMIE reports for Rs 50 each, reports from CRISIL include its company profiles--of which there are 465--as well as sectoral reviews. While the price of the sectoral reviews range between Rs 150 and Rs 250, the company profiles cost just Rs 25. CRISIL's credit-rating briefs, its reports on new ratings, and all ratings in use are also available at less than Rs 150 each. Its industry reports, on the other hand, cost as much as Rs 2,000 apiece.

Matrix is the first pay-per-use Indian Website, and users will have some trouble getting used to paying for piecemeal information. Its complicated charging system doesn't help either. Apart from the fee for every item, users also pay a subscription charge of Rs 250 a month for news reports, or Rs 500 a month for access to the database. Curiously, this is described as the individual user option. Also, organisations can only pay annually, and must pay a minimum of Rs 9,000 for news-only access or Rs 15,000 for full access.

Is Matrix too expensive? At first, it seems so, but being able to quickly reach the exact information one needs at any time of the day, or night, is its greatest strength. And while the news reports could be cheaper, the rest of it is well worth it. Now, if only the matrix of subscription rates could be made as easy as the search system.