Although India’s internet user base is growing at a rate similar to that of the US, venture capitalists are of the view that internet-based firms still have a long way to go before they challenge the likes of Yahoo! and Google.

Considering the nascent nature of India’s internet population, the internet community says that the Web 2.0 entreprenuers have to adapt and learn for the industry to succeed in India.

Speaking at a conference on Web 2.0 by the Internet and Mobile Association in India, Ravi Datanwala, Online Business Strategy Manager, Microsoft India said, “Indian entreprenuers in the Web 2.0 space can only suceed if they learn to create and combine social internet over multiple devices, i.e mobile and not just concentrate on the PC users alone.” In India, there are more mobile phone users that there are PC users, therefore Indian players could leverage these numbers to compete with the likes of global sites like Orkut and MySpace, he added.

By March 2007, India had nearly 166 million cellphone users as opposed to 40 million internet users. A majority of India’s internet entrepreneurs say that a blind copy of international players like Orkut do not offer business viability in India.

“The next generation of internet entreprenuers in India should look to integrate mobile technologies with Web 2.0. And since GPRS usage is not very high, entreprenuers should explore the possibilities of SMS-based application in the mobile internet,” says Rehan Yar Khan, Director, Yo4Ya.com.

However, the internet space is not just about the getting eyeballs. Stickiness is a real challenge to Indian portals, feels Vivek Pahwa, Founder, Desimartini.com, an Indian social networking portal. “The problem with Indian sites is that althought there are huge number of hits in the early days of a Web 2.0 portal, but they are unable to retain these visitors,” he says.

According to Alexa.com, an internet monitoring firm, YouTube is the eighth most visited site by Indians while Google’s Orkut ranks second while their Indian counterparts like sulekha.com and bharatmatrimony.com rank 50th and 76th respectively.

Says Navin Mittal, business head, Fropper.com, “Indian Web 2.0 companies are cometing with the likes of Facebook and Orkut for the same userbase. These international portals already have an established userbase, while the Indian counterparts are still building theirs, which means that the Indian internet companies have to more innovative in the service offerings. A case in point is Shaadi.com which took the concept of dating from western internet world and came out with an Indianised version, hence the stickiness to it.”

source: Indiatimes