Indyarocks is an India focused online and mobile based social networking site that is currently in private beta. Its look & feel is similar to various other SNS sites, but one point of difference is its focus on the mobile strategy (the I in the name Indyarocks is styled as a mobile phone). It is being built by a six member team (based in Hyderabad and California), which is headed by Kalyan Manyam, a serial entrepreneur and an active TiE member. They are angel funded by two highly placed Indians (who Kalyan wished not to identify).

Indyarocks has a clean UI and a simple navigation. It has all the features that have become an unstated standard for SNS sites- detailed profile, blogs, forums, photos (unlimited), classifieds, calendar, graphiti et al. You can customize you profile’s look & feel through these CSS effects. The mobile dimension is actuated through free 2 way Mobile SMS interactivity (enabled through short code 6263). You can also use SMS to capture thoughts and post in real-time to your personal diary. The calendar feature holds details about birthdays of friends, events etc and these can be notified to you mobile through SMS alerts. Kalyam informs me about the cross pollination of features on Indyarocks e.g. you can use photos from your albums while posting to blogs, forums or classifieds. New features planned are- video, Bollywood related entertainment features, photo tools, the concept of tribes etc. The website’s future revenue strategy will be based on mobile content/services and internet/mobile based ads.

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IndyaRocks looks a good site but it has a tall task ahead. The Indian social networking space already has a bunch of players (let me count – Fropper, Yaari, MingleBox, DesiMartini, Pihook, Snehah, Humsabka, Orkut, Jhoom, Yo4Ya, GoYaar etc; let me know which ones I have missed out, I’m sure there are quite a few), that are trying to be the Indian MySpace/Facebook. The perceived differences amongst these sites are actually quite low, which suggests that the reasons that may contribute to any of these site achieving dominance over others, may have little to do with product features (per se). The current leader in this pack is of course Orkut, and clearly its position is little influenced by any of its features, but by other factors like – first mover advantage, Google’s ubiquitous reach via search, Gmail etc.

Add to this the impending launch of social networking sites by some of the big daddies of India’s internet/entertainment industry. Reliance Entertainment is gearing up for the launch of its social networking site (called BigAdda). I am aware of two other Indian internet powerhouses that are readying their own SNS sites – Indiatimes & Naukri (please don’t ask me the source of this info, but its completely reliable). There are a couple of other relatively big internet players that also seem to be eyeing this space (this inference is speculative and is not backed up by anything more reliable than hearsay). All in all, in six months to a year, its extremely likely that all the twenty (or so) competitors in this space would be leaving no stones unturned to outdo each other. You should expect some real high pitched action- high voltage TV campaigns, media deals and maybe some mergers and acquisitions as well.

Notwithstanding the competition, some consolation to the various players may be the fact that there is space for more than one at the top. Its possible that instead of one clear leader (or default choice), 3-4 sites may attain critical mass and offer commercial viability.

Yahoo has launched YahooMaps for India. The application has just gone live. I spent 15 minutes of my Sunday morning tinkering with it and I am impressed. The application works well, the maps are superior in readability as compared to MapmyIndia (India’s best online mapping application); the maps also seem to be reasonable well populated with data about local facilities and businesses (at least for the bigger Indian cities)

Its basic layout and design is similar to what has become a standard for most online mapping applications. The interface is ajaxified and the tiled maps were downloading fairly fast on my 256 kbps broadband connection. You can search by specifying the street, locality, city or state. You can also search for local utilities (or businesses) like hotels, cinema halls, police stations etc. You can zoom into the map by double clicking, though the zooming interaction is flaky and unintuitive (I think, zooming is best done on GoogleMaps). There is a collapsible window that shows the map inset. And you can chose from three views- map, satellite or a hybrid of both.

Something interesting to note is that the mapping data seems to be sourced from CE Info Systems, the parent company of MapmyIndia. This would mean that MapmyIndia is not shying away from selling its data to a global giant like Yahoo, which could be its biggest competitors in the coming days (for online maps). This makes perfect sense because CEI is much more than just MapmyIndia. It is a GIS pioneer and is the single largest repository of digital spatial data in India. This also brings home the point that reliable mapping data is the single biggest barrier to entry in this space (in India). (I must add that this inference is purely based on what I see on YahooMaps. I’d probably write to MapmyIndia to get a confirmation on this) The satellite data seems to be sourced from I-Cubed.

Update on 6/4/07: I have received a confirmation from MapmyIndia about their deal with Yahoo; other deals are forthcoming in the near future as well.

The readability of Yahoo’s maps is much better than MapmyIndia’s own maps. And the mapping data seems to be fairly well populated, specially for metros. I searched for Green Park, in New Delhi, where my office is located. I could locate many restaurants, hotels, movie halls etc in its vicinity. Just to cross check, I also searched randomly for two smaller cities – Allahabad in UP (my hometown) and Indore in MP (one of my cousin stays there). The basic maps that come up are good, though searching for hotels, restaurants etc in these cities did not throw up anything meaningful. Something that is missing is the ability to embed the map into your blog or website, which is possible with MapmyIndia, and which can be very useful for virality.

Overall, the application looks great for a start. And when you see this in continuation of the mashups sites for Indian cities, that Yahoo launched sometime back, you can discern the efforts Yahoo is making to become a mainstream internet portal for India (Watch out- Rediff, Indiatimes, Sify). It does not take a soothsayer to predict that the YahooMaps site will soon get integrated into the mashup sites (might already have been done, for I haven’t checked).

Other mapping applications covered on Webyantra –

– MapmyIndia rocks Indian Web2.0 with GoogleMap type digitised mapping
– MapmyIndia adds killer feature…embedding map snippets into blogs, websites
– OnYoMo….making life better in Delhi & Bangalore
– Mapunity…a social development focused GIS solution