$80mn Eyes Social Net In India; Any Local Language Social Net Sites Around?
Funds to the tune of $80mn from angel investors are eyeying the social networking space in India, reports The Economic Times. Alok Mittal, head of Canaan Partners says that the the space is interesting since it has seen large exits for VC’s globally; Avanish Bajaj of Matrix partners adds adds that they’ll invest if they find the right team, looking to address the opportunity in the right fashion, and the site shows meaningful traction.
I’m wondering if meaningful traction is possible in the case of a social net site in English. I think the opportunity in India for traction lies in social networking related to Bollywood, Cricket and local languages, and there’s always the danger of the more popular social nets evolving to include these segments. Bollywood and Cricket social nets are already there (is there much traction?). I still haven’t heard of or come across a local language social networking space.
Social Networking is a much abused term…Users want to connect with their communities not build online social networks. Orkut is THE community offering in the Indian market. Everyone is building "social networking" offerings in the Indian market assuming Google will not do anything about Orkut which has grown 20 Times in India this year. Its extremely difficult to compete with companies like Google on product as they have unlimited capital and resources…
Hi Javed
Orkut is growing phenomnally but unless they do something about the spam and other rubbish, it may soon start seeing declining numbers.
I've seen this happen to many forums (that's what they were called before "social networking" caught on). I was an active member on one such forum (for lovers of Tamil film music), before the mob landed and hijacked the site.
I fully agree with your point that users want to connect with communities. I guess focus is all-important. A cricket- or Bollywood-focused site is much more likely to gain traction than a catch-all site (Orkut seems to be an exception).
Hi All,
We also recenetly lauched an India focused social networking site called SaffronConnect, centered around audio and video content from the Indian sub-continent. You can view the site at http://www.saffronconnect.com. Since you are all familiar with this space, I would definitely appreciate your inputs on it.
Thanks!
Krishna
social networking is already provided by existing sites such as rediff.com, desihub.com….even sulekha offers
what is the value of having new social networking sites when they are covered by existing portals!!!
I think niche Social Networking sites like the one mentioned above could definitely work – there needs to be a "hook" for users to sign into those. The standard ones provided by Rediff etc dont offer anything unique. What do you think?