New Delhi/Bangalore: One of India’s largest publishers of business listing directories, Getit Ltd, said it would put online the database it owns for 45 cities and enter the local search business, currently dominated by Internet companies such as Google Inc. and Guruji.com.

Getit, based in New Delhi and part of the Tej Bandhu group, publishes 4.5 million copies of its directories and has built a database of more than two million companies.

“We make our money through advertisements and most of the companies listed on the search engine are our advertisers,” said Sidharth Gupta, chief operating officer at Getit Infoservices.

“It (yellow pages going online) was bound to happen,” says Sanjay Tiwari, director of JuxtConsult Research and Consulting Pvt. Ltd, an online research and advisory firm in New Delhi.

“In the last two to three years, we have spent between Rs10 crore and Rs15 crore on creating the technology and infrastructure for the search engine,” said Gupta. The company has revenues of Rs70 crore, and around 95% of that comes from its print business.

“Our strategy is to be media independent and provide data across multiple channels in the next five years. Our target is that in the next five years, around 50% of our revenues will come from print and 50% from new media," said Gupta.