The Biz of Coding

Q&A with Founder of BestofIndya — Social News site for India

by Ujwal Tickoo on September 26th, 2007

After the well read Q&A with IndianPad founder here is a new Q&A with another founder of a India focused Internet site — BestofIndya. BestOfIndya is only 5 months young and but seems to have gained a small yet loyal user base. Ramesh, its founder, says that he is positioning & building BestofIndya as a "family friendly" social news site. He also feels that users on social sites need to be much more participative than they currently are.

  Ramesh started BestofIndya on March 31, 2007 and the site has already been noticed by Business 2.0 magazine as an interesting Digg clone in India — which did generate some strong dissent. This Q&A is an attempt to highlight various small or large/successful efforts to enliven the Web 2.0/Internet product space in India rather than take sides. Very few startups survive or thrive. I feel that Ramesh's attempt to work in the nascent Web 2.0 space in India is definitely worth a Q&A. Ramesh lives near Boston, and is working in the software industry. He enjoys web surfing, electronic gadgets, movies, music, console games and also likes to keep track of latest happenings in the Tech and Entertainment Industries.

Hope you enjoy this Q&A too:

Question 1) Given the Indian Internet landscape what is your motivation behind starting BestOfIndya?

Answer 1) I have been using social bookmarking web sites like digg and I like the idea of users moderating the news articles and collaboratively deciding what news is relevant, interesting and useful. Basically "User Moderation" of content is the motivation behind BestOfIndya.

Question 2) Could you share a bit more information about yourself. What does entrepreneurship mean to you?

Answer 2) I am in the software industry for a while, love programming and try to keep myself current with ever-changing technologies. While working on a project using open source came across 'Pligg' and decided to start BestOfIndya. What started as a fun learning project took the shape of a serious, informative and the present BestOfIndya.

Entrepreneur is one who notices a need and works on to fill that need.

Question 3) How and Why did you come about launching BestOfIndya. What were the key learnings?

Answer 3) I saw an opportunity to work on providing User Moderated content for News, Video, Reviews, Images and Audio. So far it has been a smooth ride. Without a doubt it has been fun filled learning experience.

Question 4) Please share some stats about BestOfIndya in terms of success metrics. How do you see this site evolving in the future?

Answer 4) With support of elite users and contributors BestOfIndya has seen tremendous growth in last 5 month. Business 2.0 magazine named BestOfIndya as the Indian Version of digg in their Sept 2007 issue .

Since the launch of the site on March 31st 2007, I have added lot of new features and working on adding more useful features on the site in the coming days. Objective of the site is to be feature rich while remaining family friendly and provide useful information to users of all age groups. I expect BestOfIndya to be one stop site on the web for all India related information. 

Question 5) What are your thoughts on the future of Web 2.0 in India. What are your key insights regarding user behaviour on Internet sites in India?

I think this is the best time ever for entrepreneurs in India. India missed earlier 90's Internet boom. But this time India has same chance as any other country if not better.

Success of Social Bookmarking sites like BestOfIndya mainly depends on users input and participation. As per my observation full potential for people to collaboratively decide what news is relevant, interesting and useful has not yet been reached as lot of users choose to stay anonymous and passive instead of actively participating in voting, discussions and voicing out their opinion. Internet is relatively young in India and I am sure this will change and Social Bookmarking will become Mainstream News source in days ahead.

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POSTED IN: India