Gyaan Sutra On entrepreneurship and technology

Welcome to the the interviews section on Gyaan Sutra. Today I had the pleasure of talking to Uday, who started IndiaSphere. In an email interview, Uday talks about his site, the latest changes, and why it is doing better than its competitors. And also the best Indian website that he has used - Indianpad. Uday works at a large software company, and works on IndiaSphere in his free time.

IndiaSphere is a new web 2.0 site tracking the Indian blogosphere. The main site is an aggregator of popular Indian social sites like rambhai and compilation of recent posts from popular Indian blogs by category.

What was the idea behind IndiaSphere?

I think the idea behind IndiaSphere is best represented by our tag line: Pulse on the Indian Blogosphere. IndiaSphere aggregates popular Indian blogs, social bookmarks, and news sites. The idea originated from looking at Popurls was localized for Indian content and modified to be more social than just being a single page aggregator.

Could you let us know a little about your profile. (like what have you been doing before this, and if you have worked on any other portals)

My day job is at a large software company. IndiaSphere is a hobby/project that I work on in my spare time. I have not worked on other portals, building IndiaSphere has been and continues to be a great learning experience.

Who are the major competitors of IndiaSphere, and how has IndiaSphere proved to be better that them.

IndiaNewsBox - they are more focused towards traditional news sources, while IndiaSphere is more focused on Blogs. IndiaSphere also adds to the experience with a richer feature set, like ability to add stories to favorites so you can easily come back to them, forwarding stories you like to your friends, leaving comments on stories, and rating stories.

eNewss - They seem to have gone over board with the number of blogs they catalog. While selecting blogs featured on IndiaSphere I consulted sites like IndiBloggies and lists like Ploterati to determine the optimal set of blogs on IndiaSphere. Like IndiaNewsBox, they also lack the social aspects that adds to the IndiaSphere experience.

What are your expectations from IndiaSphere? And what are your thoughts about monetizing it?

My vision for IndiaSphere is not to just be an aggregator but also to be a social site, thats how I want to see it evolve. The site has Google Adsense ads, but moneitzing isn’t such a priority at this stage. IndiaSphere is been around for less than 6 months, the first order of business is to grow and get more users.

Is IndiaSphere self-sufficient financially?

No, IndiaSphere doesn’t pay for itself right now. Like I said before, it’s not such a high priority right now.

What cool features should we expect in IndiaSphere in the next on year?

More categories, more regional language blogs, podcast aggregation are just some of the things that come to mind.

Do you think opening up a web portal in India is worth the effort?

India has a large population that is online and more and more people are getting online every day. So yes, if you have something different to offer this audience by all means open up a portal.

What are you thoughts about the Indian Social Networking scene. Tens of sites with huge funding have started up, and they all do the same thing. Do you see any of them gaining more members than Orkut.

Indian social networking sites need to offer something more than what is traditionally offered by sites like Orkut. It’s plain and simple if a site can offer something compelling to the Indian audience that other broader sites have missed then that site will get some attention. Starting just another me too site is not enough. Differentiate, localize, enhance that’s the way to go.

As an entrepreneur, what were the major issues that you faced while starting IndiaSphere?

IndiaSphere is a project that I work on the side, lot of the technologies involved I have been learning while developing the site. The site you see today is a fair bit different from the version 1.0 that I made. It is evolving as I am learning more. I wish I could dedicate more time to it, but for now it will stay as my side project.

What are the best Indian Internet companies that you have heard about or used?

I love IndianPad, I think they have done a great job and it shows by the active community that has developed on the site.

And Finally, what do you think about Gyaan Sutra and Ploterati. And suggestions about how I can make Ploterati more useful?

I want to thank you for writing a story on IndiaSphere, I think you are doing a great job with Gyaan Sutra and Ploterati. I would like to see short site descriptions in Ploterati along with the site name to give a better idea of the site’s content.

You can visit IndiaSphere here.