Blog of Tushar Phadke

the Indian competitor to ORKUT

A new social networking Web site, “Go Yaar.com,” has been launched globally, with its focus mainly being India and its citizens residing in different parts of the globe.

The founder and CEO of Go Yaar, Phalgun Raju, a 29-year old former McKinsey and Company Consultant holding Master’s degrees from the likes of MIT and the Harvard Business School, describes the new Web site as an exciting and easy-to-use tool to connect to and interact with friends, batch mates, and colleagues online.

The free-to-use Web site automatically validates a user as the member of a company community, when he/she registers using the company email address. Alternatively, when registering using personal email addresses, users can indicate their school and/or college affiliations within their country of domicile.

Using Go Yaar! members can design their profiles, interact with new members within their communities, and form groups. In addition, the Web site includes other interactive features such as email, video, photo album, blogs, instant messaging, and peer-to-peer collaboration tools.

With Go Yaar! members can create customized privacy settings, helping them control who will view their content, etc.

Elaborating on the social networking market, Raju said, “With more than 40 million Internet users, the country has just discovered the potential of social networking. According to an April 2006 study by Nielsen/NetRatings, the top social networking sites in the US are experiencing 47 percent annual growth. The social networking market in the country is well positioned to grow even faster, given an extremely rapid growth of Internet users and PC penetration.”

Raju said he is looking at adding key new features every month to further enhance the Web site. Go Yaar! intends to offer stiff competition to existing networking sites such as Yahoo s Hi-Fi and Google’s Orkut.