An Epic Web Browser From India

Hidden Reflex, a Bangalore based startup has released India’s first indigenously built web browser known as Epic. The browser is based on Mozilla’s Gecko layout engine and is being promoted as an Indian browser for India.

A project by Alok Bhardwaj and Tejas Vyas, the browser comes built-in with several widgets and a theme with India’s national bird – the Peacock. The widgets are India centric, from Cricket to Orkut the browser also features a ton on themes that have an Indian flavor to it.

I really like the icon, however, the first look of the browser isn’t what I’d call elegant. Here’s a screenshot:

When we talk about India, the diversity of language comes to mind and Epic allows you to type in 11 Indian languages using one of the widgets. Since, viruses are quite a hassle, Epic allows you to scan your PC using ESET’s online antivirus scanner. From the features of the browser it is evident that the developers wanted to enable users to access web services like twitter, facebook and also perform part of their computing such as anti virus scanning, take notes etc. from within the browser itself. Since the browser uses Mozilla’s engine users have access to the huge plugin database of Firefox.

Epic does have something interesting here as they are focusing on India genuinely. While India is known for its software developers we haven’t seen a lot of end-user applications indigenously built which is why I’m excited about what Epic means for India. Besides Epic, the only mainstream Indian software to make headlines was the Linux distro – BOSS, developed by C-DAC which happens to be a government organization.

The Internet browser has become the desktop wallpaper for several users and as such is an important software. There are four major players in the market, namely Internet Explorer from Microsoft, Firefox from Mozilla, Chrome from Google and Safari from Apple. If you are from India, I’d suggest you do give Epic a try.