Web 2.0 market in India abuzz with Start up activity: IDC

Bangalore, Dec 17: The Web 2.0 market in India is abuzz with start-up activity, even as global biggies continue to dominate the market with over 1.5 million users.

Global sites like Orkut, Wikipedia and others have a more dominant base and fan following in India as compared to their homegrown competitors such as Minglebox, Fropper, SirfDosti and Bigadda. Though the local sites were doing well, they were yet to achieve a threshold that would make them comparable with their global counterparts. The situation might change going forward, if these players were able to find ways of satiating local needs in ways that global sites may not be geared to address, according to a study by IDC.

Excluding the established, large global players like Orkut, YouTube, Flickr and Wikipedia, IDC estimates that Web 2.0 start-ups have a combined user base in India of around 15 lakh users, after eliminating overlaps.

The IDC Value Web Matrix developed for the study revealed that out of around 70 Web 2.0 companies, more than 55 have a consumer focus, while a select 12 show varying degrees of enterprise focus. Websites like Zoho, Cynapse, Techtribe and Uhuroo were among the few sites that have a considerable degree of enterprise or business focus.

Commenting on the study, Kapil Dev Singh, Country Manager, IDC India said, ''A high degree of entrepreneurial activity has been instrumental in shaping the current Web 2.0 scenario in India so far. The trend is likely to continue in 2008 and a "me-too" driven mushrooming up will ready the ground for a phase of shakeouts and consolidation, as some of the ventures would begin to lose steam.

This phase is expected to set in around late 2008 or early 2009. At the same time, 2008 will also see the entry of some large Web 1.0 players in the fray, which will help expand and grow the market''.

''Much of the current Web 2.0 activity in India is centered around a few areas like social networking, blogging, and photo and video sharing. The momentum towards richer, higher-value media and platforms is in the stage of a build-up and it will be around two more years for a significant impact to show up'', added Deepak Kumar, Head, Communications Research Practice, IDC India.

UNI