BigAdda member profile
By Shalini Singh

WATBlog (watblog.com) describes itself as a community of bloggers who have experience in Internet, Advertising and Technology. WATblog has news, views and reviews relating to the rapid changes taking place on the web, mobile and the interactive advertising space.

WATBlog has access to many of the movers and shakers of the new businesses in India. New Business in India seems to be more comfortable with some new media.

Last month, WATBlog had interviewed the heads of popular Indian social networking websites like BigAdda and Minglebox who said that it would take on an average 2-3 years before they make profits.

Yesterday, WATBlog published more details about the Ambani backed BigAdda which have not been reported in other media.  Apparently, social networking website BigAdda adds 15,000 new users every day and so would have as many as 4 million new members by the end of the year.  Within India, top 20 cities account for 50 percent of BigAdda members,  40 percent are from Tier 2 towns like Amritsar, Guwahati, Nasik etc.   And remaining 10 percent from Sri Lanka, Pakistan,  Dubai, US and UK

78 percent of the users are between 16-27 years with 72 percent being male.  As many as 65 percent do not smoke or drink.  62 percent hate politics. 40 percent upload and share videos and 57 percent have photo galleries.

The full WATBlog article has many interesting facts and is recommended reading.

BigAdda has deep pockets and will be spending 4 crores on advertising this year.  They have superstars like Big B promoting them.  And they have the Ambani name which is synonymous for success.  Last but not the least,  they are actively targeting the smaller cities in India which many feel is the true India, and one which is not particularly enamored by foreign sites like Facebook.  Indians in bigger cities would happily logon to Facebook,  but our cousins in Surat may prefer a good local product.  Western values of sex and language in social networking sites are still ‘foreign’ to Indians living not living in cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.

(Techgoss had run the following story on July 18, 2008)

Social networking profits?
By Shalini Singh

WATBlog (watblog.com) describes itself as a community of bloggers who have experience in Internet Advertising and Technology. WATblog has news, views and reviews relating to the rapid changes taking place on the web, mobile and the interactive advertising space.

WATBlog has access to many of the movers and shakers of the new businesses in India. New Business in India seems to be more comfortable with some new media. Yesterday, it interviewed founders of Indian social networking sites namely Minglebox.com’s Kavita Iyer, BigAdda.com COO Siddhartha Roy and Fropper.com Business Head Navin Mittal.  The questions covered a wide spectrum and ranged from competition by Facebook to monetizing social networks in India.

What were interesting were the answers to the question on when the social networking sites in India will make money.   By a conservative estimate, between 50 to 100 crores have been invested into Indian social networking sites.

Kavita Iyer from Minglebox was diplomatic and replied:  “In the next 2-3 years, this question will find a definitive answer.”

Siddhartha from BigAdda (where Big B blogs) was equally diplomatic: “Social networking in India is still in its nascent stage and the growth of the same is largely dependant on the penetration of broadband across all markets in the country. The trend is catching up and will soon grow bigger with the site going mobile. Its not possible to set a date to the establishment of a profit margin in the business, but yes the future is bright.”

Navin from Fropper took the same line:  “Social networking is a continuously evolving space, and a fairly nascent industry not only in India, but also across the world; innovations in revenue streams will happen simultaneously hence it would be too early to comment on sustainability/ profitability. Globally social networks are working with various permutations, combinations to arrive at a foolproof business model and in the years to come we will see a lot of fruitful changes in this sector.”

Even highly successful western social networking websites like Facebook and MySpace are facing challenges making money from their tens of millions of clients.  Looks like Indian business models have similar issues.

The full article is recommended reading.  It can be accessed at the WatBlog website