MUMBAI: The Indian community in India and around the world now has an exciting and easy-to-use tool to connect and interact with friends, batch mates and colleagues online- GoYaar.com.
Go, Yaar! is unique among social networking websites in India that build directly on the communities that are already important to individuals -- their schools, universities, and companies. The site was launched by an Indian-born former McKinsey & Company consultant in September 2006.
Registering using a company email address automatically validates a user as a member of a company community. Alternatively, users can indicate their school and over 3,000 college affiliations in India, the US, and Canada if registering using their personal email addresses.
Once registered, a user can design a personalized profile, interact with and meet new members of their academic and company communities, invite friends to events, and form groups. In addition, Go, Yaar! provides a set of highly flexible and fully integrated email, video, photo album, blogging, instant messaging and peer-to-peer collaboration tools, all as a one-stop source informs the release.
"With more than 40 million Internet users, India has just discovered the potential of social networking," says Go, Yaar!'s CEO and founder, Phalgun Raju.
"There is a tremendous opportunity for Go, Yaar! to redefine the space and become India's premier social networking destination given its focus on India and NRIs, its multitude of features, and its rapidly growing member base," adds Raju.
The website is entirely free. "According to an April 2006 study by Nielsen/NetRatings, the top social networking sites in the U.S. are experiencing 47% annual growth," explained Raju. "The social networking market in India is well positioned to grow even faster given India's extremely rapid growth of Internet users and PC penetration."
Go, Yaar! provides its members with customized privacy settings, which enable them to control who can view their content, and an ever-evolving robust set of interactive tools to create and share information while building relationships.
"To continuously enhance our users' experience, we are targeting adding key new features every month to the site," said Raju. "The growth of 4.5 million new mobile phone subscribers per month across the country will be a key driver for Go, Yaar!'s growth as we unveil mobile capabilities in the future."
