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The Circle of Life

• Name: ApnaCircle
• Type: Social Networking/Niche
• Whats it about: Social networking and career based networking put together
• Start-up Year: 2007
• Founder/CEO: Yogesh Bansal
• URL: www.apnacircle.com

The site, backed by web guru Sabeer Bhatia, aims to provide a parallel platform for both social and career networking. Upload pictures, send free SMS, search for profiles and jobs, and gain from the networking sites reward program. Users can gain points for various activities conducted on the website and these points can be redeemed later. This is a first of its kind model on an Indian social networking community that incentivizes your activities on the website.

More than PPT

• Name: authorSTREAM
• Type: User generated
• Whats it About: Online PowerPoint presentations and slideshow sharing
• Start-up Year: 2008
• Founder/CEO: Harmen Singh
• URL: http://www.authorstream.com/

It might not claim to be the largest community for sharing presentations like its close competitor SlideShare, but with an active user basemost from outside Indiaa number of integrated applications, and a strong privacy policy to protect uploaded PPTs, it is fast catching up. A set of developers and engineers at authorSTREAM understand your presentation, convert it into Flash and then upload, helping greatly in retaining its originality. Try its PresentLive application where innumerable people from remote locations can view a presentation as it is being made directly from the site.

Bharat Goes Global

• Name: BharatStudent
• Type: Social Networking/Niche
• Whats it About: A platform for the young soul of India, across the globe
• Start-up Year: 2007
• Founder/CEO: Vishnu Vardhan Induri
• URL: www.bharatstudent.com

Bharatstudent.com is a social utility that brings together all the young Indians living across the globe. It is for every young Indian who is a student or a non-student, fresh graduate, a working professional or an entrepreneur, and is focused on providing comprehensive solutions for any personal and professional issues. It has zones like Cafe Bharat, study zone etc. And according to ComScore World Matrixit it was the 3rd most visited social networking site in December 2008, with 3.3 million users!

The BIG Boss

• Name: BigAdda
• Type: Social Networking
• Whats it About: Providing the Indian youth a networking platform loaded with various features
• Start-up Year: 2007
• Founder/CEO: Shivanandan Pare, COO
• URL: www.bigadda.com

This is perhaps the closest desi answer we have to the biggies like Orkut and Facebook. BigAdda is actually the big brother of Web 2.0 social networking in India. On its agenda lies the effort to help the Indian youth in identity creation and self expression. It integrates social networking and blogging, which is a one of a kind initiative. The BigAdda blogging platform received a tremendous boost when Amitabh Bachchan chose it as his blogging platform.

BigAdda is owned by Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group

Well Digested

• Name: Burrp TV
• Type: Rating/UGC Platforms
• Whats it About: Finding and rating local stuff, from restaurants to TV channels
• Start-up Year: 2007
• Founder/CEO: Deap Ubhi, co-founder & CEO
• URL: www.burrp.com

Burrp TV is the local information portal for your city. It provides listings, reviews and details of whats hot and whats not in the city of your residence. Predictably enough, it covers only the prominent metros and caters to the audience who like to plan their life online. With a catchy name and an extremely snazzy and well loaded website, Burrp is fast catching attention and leveraging it too. Its blog also provides for an interesting read its jazzy and its young, and has this cool aura around it, which seems to be working for it.

Building a Neighborhood

• Name: Commonfloor
• Type: Community-based
• Whats it About: Community of owners and residents of housing societies and apartments
• Start-up Year: June 2007
• Founder/CEO: Sumit Jain & Lalit Mangal
• URL: http://www.commonfloor.com

The concept of RWA takes shape in the form of online virtual community mainly to connect neighbors and residents of the same locality, discuss issues related to their neighborhood, talk about facilities and amenities, join in activities, basically providing an easy tool for apartment management. Apart from information about the locality, basic processes like notification, maintenance and repair are discussed on the board. Popular housing societies from real estate biggiesBPTP, Rahejas, Omaxe, Shipra, Jaypee, TDIfind a community with active members on this site.

Stirred, Shaken and Shared

• Name: DesiMartini
• Type: Social Networking
• Whats it About: Providing a social networking site for Indians all over the world
• Start-up year: Dec 2006, operational in 2007
• Founder/CEO: Dhruv Gupta, head, business intelligence
• URL: www.desimartini.com

This is perhaps one of the most famous names to reckon with in the Indian social networking space. It is well known that DesiMartini is a social networking platform that helps Indians all over the world connect, discuss and share. DesiMartini is a venture of the Hindustan Times Group and has gained popularity with the urban youth. Of late, it has started talking about customization and demographical offerings. Sometime back it also launched the popular viral ad, Makkadman produced by WebChutney.

For a Good Date

• Name: Fropper
• Type: Social Networking
• Whats it about: Social networking and dating
• Start-up Year: 2007
• Founder/CEO: Navin Mittal
• URL: www.fropper.com

From the creators of Shaadi.com, Makaan.com, Mauj.com, etc, the perfect progression for the People Interactive group was a social networking site. Though it has what every other social networking site hasvideos, music, blogsit is a very popular Indian dating site. With around 4 mn members, the site introduces new features and applicatoins to keep the engagement level of users high. Froppers IPL T20 Zone is already a hit. Fropper has an integration with mobile as well other sites from the group. In 2008 it launched Fropper Music, a place to network through music.

No Ones a Balti Here

• Name: Ibibo
• Type: Social Networking
• Whats it about: Promote your talent, connect with similar talent people
• Start-up year: Jan 2007
• Founder/CEO: Ashish Kashyap
• URL: http://www.ibibo.com

The abundance of talent that India is known for is reflected through this site. Being a talent based social networking site, music, acting, sports, modeling or any talent that a youngster would want to be recognized for can be showcased through the site. Not to leave aside sharing music, video sharing, and much more. The easy recognition has appealed to the Indian youth as they promote their talent through options like Ibibo Portfolio (get your portfolio shot by a photographer), Ibibo Fresh Face, Ibibo Rocks, etc, as they unite with people across the country based on their talent also.

India 360

• Name: Indiamarks
• Type: User Generated
• Whats it about: Guide to everything Indian
• Start-up Year: April 2007
• Founder/CEO: Vaibhav Domkundwar
• URL: http://www.indiamarks.com

It is a user driven site on everything to do with Indiamovies, food, restaurants, people, debates on issues in India and much more. The website emphasizes on high quality content in a bid to create a one-stop destination to know everything about India. Recent posts by users include Mangos, Mumbai, a look into Indias slums, five places in India to escape the summer, etc. Check out their Dishoom Dishoom, a debate and discussions forum. Contributors to the website can even earn through the websites Share & Earn reward program.

The Peoples Tree

• Name: Indipepal
• Type: Social Networking
• Whats it about: Commentaries from Indian thought leaders and social networking
• Start-up Year: March 2008
• Founder/CEO: Prashant Agarwal
• URL: http://indipepal.com

Structured around three main categories of social networking, content, and commentary, come to Indipepal to known more people in politics, defense, NGOs, supermodels, etc; write entries in the Virgin Diaries, and in the process connect with people who share your views. Within a month of its launch, some prominent Indian thought leaders, models, writers, etc, have written commentaries on the website, sometimes as much as 4-5 times in a week. The no-nonsense feel to the website is what strikes you. Come here to not connect with your college friends but mingle with new, like-minded individuals serious about what is happening around them.

The Desi Connection

• Name: IndyaRocks
• Type: Social Networking
• Whats it About: Connecting Indians across the globe
• Start-up Year: March 2007
• Founder/CEO: Kalyan Manyam
• URL: http://www.indyarocks.com

It is your homegrown Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, all rolled into one. Find a Graffiti Wall, add someone to the Crush List, or use the blog this option, etc. Moving into the realm of a viral social network has been easy for the site because of its heavy focus on Bollywoodwhat Indians love the most. Its bid to popularize and differentiate the portal was seen in its partnership with FXLab to launch a social gaming community with more than 5,000 online casual gamesanother craze building up in India.

A Web 2.5 Experience

• Name: Kreeo
• Type: Tools
• Whats it About: Tools to better web experience through collective human intelligence
• Start-up Year: 2007
• Founder/CEO: Sumeet Anand
• URL: www.kreeo.com

Kreeo is trying to use collective human intelligence to make all aspects of knowledge management richer and better. In terms of business model, that translates into creating a mix of enterprise offering that it will sell organizations on a license/pay per use model and an open web of users where it will support the free offering through advertising model. In organizations, it will make knowledge management a more interactive process by capturing it from all employees more effectively; in open web, it will make research more relevant by adding collective human intelligence to add value to the search.

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