Gateway Multimedia India Limited

[Gauri Wagenaar]

Ahmedabad, August 20, 1997
Dear scholars,

I am Henk W. Wagenaar, originally from Amsterdam, The
Netherlands, married to an Indian and living and working in
Ahmedabad, India.

Our company, Gateway Multimedia India Ltd., in which Sangeeta S.
Parikh is my partner, is the one that computerised the first
Hindi-English dictionary ever and issued it on CD-ROM as well as
in print.

Gateway is specialised in the computerisation of Indian languages
in their respective scripts. Since February '95 we are working
on a multi-lingual database of Indian languages linked to the
major European and at a later stage Arabic and others. 

In collaboration with the Alliance Francaise of Ahmedabad, we
plan to start a French-Hindi-French and a French-Gujarati-French
database, each direction containing approx. 100 - 150.000 entries.

Its Ahmedabad director, Olivier Debray and the Cultural Attache
of the French Embassy in Delhi, are strong supporters of the
project. 

We opt to involve students in particular for the data entry,
basic corrections, etc. and the professors for the editing. 

For your kind information, the Alliance Francaise in Ahmedabad
attracts approx. 1250 students a year and is the best functioning
cultural society in Gujarat.

Cost of the project is estimated at Rs. 25 Lakh, which would be
approx. FF 412,500 / $ 69.500. I am sure you all are aware of the
average Indian income and expenditures. In short, the two figures
out-balance each other to the extreme.

For funding of the project we will naturally approach all French
companies based in India (fortunately the French embassy had a
comprehensive booklet on them). 

But you have the honour to be the first ones (your address was
ready at hand). If your department, your faculty or institute is
interested in the project, in whatever way, let us know, and we
will supply you with additional information and answer all the
questions from your side.

For the French speaking among you, Olivier will answer them in
person (and in French of course).

Some additional information; our database contains Hindi-English,
English-Hindi, almost the entire Manak Hindi Kosh, plus other
Indian languages (often per target group, such as business,
technical & administrative terms, social science, daily life,
etc.). At present we are working on English-Malayalam.

We also develop linguistic software. A so-called Keyboard Hook
of which the foundation was laid by Jeroen Hellingman, is being
developed by our youngest system engineer, Ashish Shah (and is
almost ready for WIN95 as well) with a transparent phonetic
notation. All of you familiar with the (Frans) VELTHUIS notation
can start instantly!

This is unlike the complicated one as developed by C-DAC in Pune,
but one that uses the same keystrokes for each of the 18 Indian
languages, no overlay required. 

It will also enable you to develop your private (multimedia)
applications under WINDOWS. The modules can be used with Delphi,
Visual C++, etc., in the Indian script of your choice.

In the near future we will market this product commercially to
finance our linguistic productions. Although we are a public
limited (for tax reasons), we are highly depending on the sale
of such products and on DATA ENTRY work.

In case your department has huge amounts of data entry work in
Sanskrit, Hindi & Gujarati, do contact us for a quotation.

Yours sincerely,

Henk W. Wagenaar
Sangeeta S. Parikh

PS. Any supporters for the Monier-Williams on CD-ROM? 
    We all dreamed & talked about it. Gateway can do it!