Top Web Apps in India
Co-written with Neeraj Kumar of India Upcoming
It's an exciting time for the
economy in India, which is also reflected in its Web market. India has 1.1 Billion people
and the average age of the nation is just 24.9 years. The Indian GDP is growing at 8% +
and after years of dependence on the agriculture sector, now the service sector
contributes more than 50% of the GDP. It's testament to the growth of the service sector
that even though India produces 350,000 new engineers a year, there is still a shortage
of graduates to meet the demand of the high GDP growth rate (
source: LA Times).
Internet usage
The number of Internet users in India is estimated at between 45 Million and 50 Million. That makes India the 4th biggest country in the world in terms of total Internet users - behind only the US, China and Japan. However due to India's huge population, its Internet Penetration is among the lowest in the world at only 4.5%. What's more, it is estimated that only 10 million of those users are real power users who spend money online. While there is seemingly a lot of room for growth in the Indian market, a recent report quoted by contentSutra indicates that "there's a long way to go before a critical mass is reached..." Another challenge is that there are 23 mainstream languages that are spoken in India.
Top Web apps
NOTE: We can't hope to cover all the web apps in India, so please don't be offended if we've missed your app. We invite you to add more Indian web apps in the comments section.
India's eBay
Bazee.com ( it means ‘betting’ in Hindi) was probably the first Indian website to make a buzz in the market, when it was acquired by eBay. It’s still very successful and a thriving site in India.
Matrimonial sites
In India there are lot of matrimonial sites. The complete list is available at http://indiaupcoming.com/tag/matrimonial. Among them all, Shaadi.com and BharatMatrimony.com are probably the most successful. Both of these sites have plans to diversify into other regional languages too.
Online Travel
Although currently the online travel sector comprises a mere 2.2 per cent of the domestic travel market, it has the potential for high growth and the field is heating up. Among the players, MakeMyTrip.com is very successful - although it’s facing tough competition from other notable players like Yatra.com and Arzoo.com. It should be noted that Arzoo.com is founded by Sabeer Bhatia, the co-founder of Hotmail.
Digg clones
It’s interesting to note that there are a number of digg.com clones - but none of them has any major traction in the market.
There is also rambhai.com, which was emailed to me recently with the note: "Yes from the tech perspective it is like a Digg clone. But the content and community are genuinely Indian and that is our focus." So it is localized content, which has been a theme in this series.
News Portals
Rediff.com is the most widely used news portal. It’s a public company and provides services in matrimonial, auction, classified, shopping, travel deals, chat, photo albums, social networking, and more.
Jobs
Naukri.com is the most widely used job portal and it has a significant lead over rivals like MonsterIndia.com
Real estate
The growth in the service sector has fuelled growth in the real estate market in India. There are a number of players, but 99acres.com took an early lead in this field by using well positioned ads.
Online movie rentals
Seventymm.com is India’s largest online movie rental service, offering access to over 10,000 titles across multiple languages. In this field the competitors are CatchFlix.com, ClixFlix.com, HomeView.in and CineSprite.com
Web Office
Zoho is a sponsor of ReadWriteWeb and it is from India. It produces world class collaborative tools and is highly regarded in India.
Online Photos
There are a number of sites where one can upload the pictures of a trip to Disneyland - and a copy of those pictures will be mailed (as in snail mail, not email!) to the family in India. This service is targeted towards Indians who are in the US or UK, and whose family don’t have internet services in their home in India. Players in this field are 123Shots, itasveer, Picsquare and Merasnap.
Other notable sites
- Pixrat.com is a popular social bookmark for pictures.
- Burrp! is a fun and easy way to check out and share reviews and recommendations about establishments in your city and your neighborhood.
- Tezaa is an online community that is all about polls.
- MouthShut.com is a platform for consumers to voice their opinions on thousands of products and services.
- DesiMatch.com is a dating site.
- RadioVeRVe (formerly Infinity Radio) is for independent musicians across the country to promote themselves.
- Bixee.com is a web-crawling robot that visits websites containing job information.
- BangaloreLive.com and MumbaiLive.com are sites providing local news, music and gossip.
- MeraVideo.com and ApnaTube.com are video sharing sites.
Disclaimer: Neeraj Kumar contributed to this article and the site IndiaUpcoming.com is maintained by him.
Richard's note: I want to thank Neeraj very much for all the great information in this post. As with all the other International posts we've done on Read/WriteWeb, there are bound to be web apps we've neglected to mention. For that I apologize in advance, but please feel free to add them to the comments here. Also if you are familiar with India's web market, we'd love to hear your views and stories.
This post is part of Read/WriteWeb's continuing coverage of international Web markets. Other countries profiled so far have been Germany, Holland, Poland, Korea, United Kingdom, Russia, Spain, China, Turkey, Italy, Brazil, France and Japan.
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The president of Monster (India & regional areas) recently clamied that they have more resumes than that of Naukri.com. Naurki.com responded to that claim and the counter claim. The debate is still going on. More on this at http://www.contentsutra.com/jobs-portal-sweepstakes-
monster-india-gets-more-new-resumes-than-competitor-arun-tadanki
There is also http://www.saddegeet.com for Punjabi music videos :)
While, I'm not Indian, I spend a fair amount of my time on websites from and about India (I have a love affair with the country...)
I find Onyomo Maps to be pretty cool, and the Faresearch service (search domestic and international airfares across all available airlines) offered by rediff to be instrumental for anyone, local or otherwise, for travel planning.
Also, who knew that you can check exactly where your train is and what time it will pass through a certain station? In India, you can.
On a related note, you might like the top 10 sites to submit Indian blogs.
Awesome profile. Thanks so much. I added a link to Online Personals Watch. Shaadi and Bharatmatrimony are indeed the leaders. Bharat splits up it sites whereas as Shaadi operates under the one site. Fropper is their leading social network, btw.
Mark Brooks
Analyst/Consultant
http://www.onlinepersonalswatch.com
212-444-1636
Hi,
Would like to bring to your attention, a truly Indian online Gaming Platform, called Jambav, that caters to the 0 to 10 age group of kids worldwide, while providing a special focus on including kids with special needs, like autism, dyslexia, learning disabilities, etc.
Do visit us at http://www.jambav.com and http://blogs.jambav.com
Rajendran
Team Jambav.
Continuing from the previous post (blogmaster, please combine the two comments if you can!),
a) We were profiled at Startups.in, here. http://startups.in/India/story.php?title=Jambav-Indias-Magic-Kingdom-On-Web
b) Zoho, profiled above, and Jambav, share the same parent company - AdventNet.
Rajendran.
Team Jambav.
I think, following web applications are also quite famous in India:
- www.raaga.com (for Indian music)
- www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com (news - more popular than rediff)
- www.sify.com (news, business, shopping, sports, movies, vedic astrology, food, and bollywood videos for Indians and NRIs)
- www.ndtv.com (news)
- www.moneycontrol.com (leading financial information source)
- www.santabanta.com (for entertainment)
- www.smashits.com (for online video's of bollywood movies)
Indian version of You Tube ;-)
http://www.apnatube.com/index.php
Do we have a similar analysis of the popular web apps in the rest of the world?
It will be interesting to compare.
Hi Jitendra, right at the bottom of the post there are links to 'top web apps' in other countries.
Check out: www.DriveInside.com - India's No. 1 Auto Website
Somewhat surprising to see the real web apps of India missing. Look at top sites in India on Alexa - http://www.alexa.com/browse/general/?&CategoryID=25001&mode=general&R=True&Start=1&SortBy=Popularity
India is still a very email, search, portal, jobs, matrimony country. Online financial services is another area which this article has missed... Digg clones, movie rentals, real estate, photo sharing might be "interesting" but hardly qualify to be in the list for "top web apps in india"
bollywood is another popular category (per alexa) that got missed here -- indiafm, smashits, etc.
railway booking, irctc.com -- 5 million transactions a year...
Hi
Nice writeup. If more people are to use the Net in India, we need more apps in local languages. My startup, Panacea Dreamweavers, has been working in this area for a while. Last week we launched www.pdstext.com, an online word processor that enables users to write and mail in Tamil. We plan to add support for other major Indian languages soon.
Freshersworld.com is the 5th job site in INdia with an Alexa rating of 3700.
Also it is the top career site in India.
I have a blog where I write about the Internet industry in India. I had a compiled a list of such top Indian Internet companies. You can check them out at http://www.readwriteweb.com
For Mark Brooks:
Well, I am not sure how you concluded Fropper is the leading social n/w site. I would think Orkut gets more page-views here in India.
Good List,
You must mention cyn.in
They are the first in the enterprise knowledge management space to build a 100% online KM solution with collaboration and groupware.
Excellent post richard. I knew India was coming when you started your Top ten webapps series. I think it would have been nice if you had quickly summarized what you felt would be big in India in the coming years. We just launched www.campuschai.com . Our goals are -
- Providing colleges with tools to manage their placement strategy.
- Enabling employers to collaborate better with Universities/Colleges and Students.
- Helping students experience a streamlined recruiting process
I wanted to add one more web application to your review list.
I am one of the founders of CollCraft Technologies a company incubated at IIT Bombay. We have just launched our web application called Uhuroo (the name comes from the word ‚Äúuhuru‚Ä? which means freedom in swahili).
Uhuroo is a collaborative web research tool. The tool helps users in information collection, sharing and consolidation as part of various web-research initiatives.
Our goal is to enable people to Research and not re-search. It would be great if you could try out our tool (i.e. http://www.uhuroo.com) and give us some feedback.
For property i like IndiaProperty.com they have largest listings and cool features.
Another possible application to add in your list is INDIMOTO.com, it's a leading auto classifieds site and India's 1st Carpool website. Indimoto.com was featured on Webyantra (http://www.webyantra.net/2006/07/11/indimoto-it%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%98cool-to-pool%e2%80%99-in-india-now%e2%80%a6/)
Checkour SaafNews (Clean News) at http//www.saafnews.com
i think every one forgotten about the new website based on web2.0 application that is www.netvibes.com,
if you got nay new innovation ideas like this please mail us we will help you to build you innovation and to present before the whole world.
i think every one forgotten about the new website based on web2.0 application that is www.netvibes.com,
if you got any new innovation ideas like this please mail us we will help you to build you innovation and to present before the whole world.
success just one more helping....
future - when you just feel like it.
outsourceB2B get's you where you're going.
achievement, not that other crap.
What does netvibes have to do with India?
List of web 2.0 apps from India http://www.watblog.com/index.php?tag=%20india%202.0
Nice post. Not a surprise you missed techTribe, since we just launched. But, it's probably one of the web 2.0 efforts that doesn't have a parallel in the US :). In fact, we decided to launch in India first, even though it's a US firm.
Rohit
Neeraj, Richard:
I also wanted to point you to indiagoes (http://www.indiagoes.com) which was launched earlier this year as a new generation Indian news service with a robust aggregation, context extraction, tagging and recommendation feature, all of which are clear differentiators, in addition to a laser focus on user experience. I'd love to see your thoughts.
Cheers,
-Vaibhav
Good article - came to know many new INDIA based websites. Indianupcoming.com is really a good site which features only indian based sites, I check this site daily.....
Good work.....
from
http://www.snehah.com
Check http://www.firsttimeinlove.com
Guys, if you're looking at travel, you should check out www.flightraja.com.
It provides a one-stop search for all domestic airlines in a very simplistic style and clean way.
I tried fare search and other online travel portals, but Flightraja provides really good stuff.
I have been running a social networking website for desis for quite some time and would like to plug it in here.
http://www.apundesi.com
Hey you have established a great and innovative website. I liked the domain name. Its expressive. Since you are listing best web applications on your website dont miss these web applications from India. Do have a look at the portfolio. They are Good!
Awesome posts. Have had fun checking out a lot of these sites.
You should check out www.hooeey.com. Its a site that helps you browse. Basically check marks on all items, if you created a wish list of everything you wanted a browser to support, but didnt (eg tagging, analysing your web time allocation, sharing info either in groups or just about anything else).
there is also www.secgeeks.com and www.newskicks.com .
Good post, with all the start ups, the internet space surely looks a very attactive. But the greatest success story has been jobs. Acc to a news site in may 06 the number of Indians searching for jobs only was 6.5 mln.
Makes all business & economic sense after click jobs from Bharat Matrimony, Shaadi too is planning to enter the space.
Hey, you have to include AapkaVideo in this list. AapkaVideo allows you to upload and share videos with others and it exclusively caters to the Indian audience.
AapkaVideo is a totally free online service. To upload videos, you should register for an account with AapkaVideo. Upload your favourite videos or original videos you have shot to this site. Watch videos others have uploaded, comment, and share videos with others by creating links and emailing them to others. AapkaVideo account holders can even share multiple videos at a time.
AapkaVideo supports all video file types like .wmv, .mpeg, .mpg, avi etc. You can browse through the categories and watch videos of your choice. The most popular videos will be featured on the Appkavideo home page.
The site monitors the videos uploaded for offensive and obscene content. Accounts of users who experiment with uploading such videos will be immediately terminated. Users can also participate in reporting videos that are downright offensive, obscene and illegal to the AapkaVideo. Such videos will be removed.
I came across this fantastic video site called www.connectfilms.com
This site has bollywood and hollywood videos side by side and it is very well presented.
The most important thing is that it introduces hollywood fans to bollywood and vice-versa. it is a good concept. i really liked it. you guys need to check this site.
Hi Manoj,
i checked this site www.connectfilms.com it looks impressive. i think India needs these kind of sites. youtube and myspace is too international.
awsome collection.i found this in kamalabhatt's blog
www.indyarocks.com
www.bu.llet.in.com
Please. putvote.com is a hangout for trolls in India. I really can't understand how a troll hangout can become one of the top web apps in India. Richard, you are lowering the standard of your website by allowing such articles. In fact, there are far better web apps in India than what the author has mentioned in this article.
I found a desi evite version. It lets you send evites for festivals like Diwali, Republic day, Sankranti, Christmas
www.emantran.com
This is awesome collection of cool web2.0 websites from India.
Keep up the Good Work ;-)
Domain Name Registration, Web Hosting Services, Email Solutions , Website Design Services,Web Application Development,Corporate CD Development, SMS Solutions, Reseller Opportunities ,Wholesale Dealers for IBM/Compaq/HP/Acer /Mercury
Good Article.
We have come up with a New Job Portal xclusively for Walk-in Interviews in India.
Check this out.
http://www.chalowalkin.com
Thanks.
My wife and I developed a mashup website called GuruLib (http://www.gurulib.com) to help organize home libraries. Using a book shelf metaphor, GuruLib catalogs books, movies, music, games and software online. Adding titles to GuruLib can be done with very little key input. All relevant cataloging information is collected automatically from Amazon servers around the world or from over 530 public libraries around the world. Checkout my home library cataloged under http://www.gurulib.com/coolabcgirl
check www.koolpool.co.in
Desi version of evite, with invitation for Holi, Diwali, Baisakhi, Cricket invitations and more
http://www.emantran.com
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