Hot on the heels of MySpace Korean comes another international addition of MySpace, i.e. MySpace India. From recent buzz on the Web, this Indian version of MySpace will going to be launched on this April 17th, and there will have an official launch party at that night as well. In particular, this party located in Taj Land’s End Amphitheater, Mumbai will be free, starting from 6pm and there are three awesome bands: Pentagram, Superfuzz, and Them Clones to be featured at that party, according to an Indian MySpacer.

Nevertheless, MySpace Indian version is up and running at this moment. In other word, Indian users can now sign-up to this site. Unlike MySpace Korean, this site will only available in English, and Indian users will not find their native languages such as Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Gujarati, Kannada, or Malayalam on MySpace India.

InstaColl has released an office suite that was probably developed by them for more than one year. It is called Live Documents since the name they chosen reflected this office software, the documents can be worked “lively” in both environments, the desktop and on the Web. Though InstaColl has reiterated that this software they developed is not competing with Microsoft Office or Google docs, but this powerful office application can offer functionality equivalent to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint would definitely make their users unconsciously compare them hand-in-hand. On top of that, Live Documents is built using RIA (Rich Internet Application) technologies such as Flash and Flex, the effect of Flash-based user interface could generate the same kind of experience that is comparable to the experiment of using BuzzWord.

One of the most powerful features in this Live Document is the dual use of online and offline. Any changes on either side of the desktop version or Web version are automatically synchronized and hence, the value of a document can be magnified as multiple users can edit a specific document and the document is always in sync. Meanwhile, they’ve planned to release the software into two different versions, one is free and the other one is the commercial version. Though Live Documents is still in beta, this software has caught the eyes of some corporations. As stated on the InstaColl site, the first commercial version will be deployed at Aricent, the world’s leading independent communications software company with over 6,700 employees globally.

InstaColl is well-structured and created with the hype of being co-founded by the co-founder of Hotmail, Sabeer Bhatia. Mr. Bhatia, a native of Bangalore, India, also a graduate of Caltech and Stanford University, went back to Bangalore from US to create this new startup. Now InstaColl hoping to do something special, and entrepreneurial about software development. It seem they’re well in progress developing the first “Made by India” product brand and the first product released likely to be used by users throughout the world. For those who want to receive the beta invites, you can visit the sign-up page here.

The other day I came across a new micro-blogging service called chittR that founded in India. It was just launched in Alpha from a stealth mode, and a bit disappointed I did not found any detail on whom created this startup. However, as seen on the landing page, no one can argue that they’re not following the Twitter business model, therefore users that sign-up are allowed to send updates via IM or through the Web. It is a Twitter-like service that based on Adobe’s Flex 2. Therefore, if you click on any button, a Flash dialog box will appear in front of the page and loading of page for seconds is expected. For every user, once you sign-up, you’re allowed to post your update for a maximum 140 character per message, they preferred the word, chittRbox. On chittR, you also allowed to invite your buddies, following your friends’ updates, reply an update, post update restricted to your followers, find message through a system of tags, etc. What different from them with Twitter is Twitter was using “what am I doing” that drive the momentum of users in posting the updates, they distinguish with “What are YOU thinking ??”

Currently, they had less than 200 alpha testers, i.e. chittR-ers, many of whom signed up by the month of August. I feel it’s still too early to conclude its actual business model, given the immature of their technology, process and practice. I will report back on this startup when they officially launched in beta, stay tuned.

India is one of the fastest growing mobile phone markets in the world and the mobile concentration is extremely high especially in the middle and low-end market segments. It seems that Google India is trying to tap into this market by launching the Google SMS service. Google SMS service is the first text message-like service that offered by Google in the Asian countries. Users can now get their search queries to be returned in the SMS text messages by Google India through a shortcode 54664 [5GOOG] sent from their mobile phones. This service is currently available in four cities that include Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai and the mobile operator networks that support this service are Aircel, Airtel, BPL, BSNL, and Reliance. Though this service is available as a beta service, users need to pay for this SMS service as prescribed by the aforesaid operator networks, minimum cost is 3 rupees per SMS.

In emerging markets such as India and China where poor Internet network infrastructure can be found in certain areas, mobile phone has became the number one choice that people use it to communicate and stay connected. The introduction of Google India SMS service is a move that marked how clever Google in react to this particular market, this product strategy is similar to the launched of voice search services that offered by Baidu in China this August.

Microsoft India has launched a new Website that called NextWeb. This is their second attempt to clarify the markets and customer segments that Microsoft India would address. Why I said second attempt, their first attempt was the reinvent of their Hotmail product, the “Cool Hotmail” that allowed an Indian user to get a unique email ID that reflect her own personality. Cool Hotmail was launched in last month and I did not covered this product when it launched partly because I think the email ID ends with mumbairocks.in, clubsrk.in, Iamgod.in, ilioveyoga.in is not really that cool. Paradoxically, the formerly “ordinary” product is becoming fully cool, while the cool product that I first saw on the Web is becoming run out of cool.

Both the CoolHotmail and NextWeb, recently launched by Microsoft, is their latest resolve to extend their technology coverage beyond the operating system segment, or corporate IT professionals to encompass computer hobbyists, designers, and the younger generation people. This move led to Microsoft India’s rearticulation of its business model. Prior to this, many people perceived Microsoft India as a desktop technology provider, but now Microsoft India saw their opportunities in some of their Web products and begins to create greater value for their end users there. They recognized ways to improve their Hotmail product by providing choices of personalized email ID, and now with the building of this NextWeb Website, they showed their Indian users how they will have a compelling experience by using their Web technology, i.e. Silverlight in building a Web platform.

Not long ago, I posted a blog entry that provided a link to an article entitled “web 2.0 is not for India,” and can you believe it, things have changed now. As opposed to the above viewpoint, social networks are currently hot in India, particularly these two sites, iShare and BigAdda.

According to an Indian news, Rediff iShare claims it has managed to hook nearly 1 million users in just a month and a half. BigAdda meanwhile, is looking at hooking close to 10 million users by 2010.

I just came across a news that mentioned Sunnyvale-based Minekey has raised $3 million in a round A financing that led by NEA IndoUS Ventures. Minekey is a startup that founded in year 2005 and have offices in Santa Clara and Bangalore. They have a simple goal in mind, to solve the information overload an average Internet user face today. However, the widget Minekey that target contents/news to Internet users’ interests is by tracking the users’ click stream data. Normally, the technology for tracking click stream data began with cookies. Minekey collected the visit information through all these click stream data and then analyzed those data in order that they know what contents should have delivered.

Minekey was founded by Delip Andra as a project incubated at IIT Kharagpur, India’s leading technology institute. Previously, it received a seed funding amounted to $600k also from the venture capitalist NEA IndoUS Ventures.

I just came across an interesting article that entitled, “Google, Yahoo may be eyeing Rediff,” discusses a possible acquisition of an Indian portal by the U.S.-based Internet giants, Google and Yahoo!. Rediff, found in 1996, is a leading online portal targeting at India and Indians worldwide. It offered a variety of community offerings such as search engine, domestic airfare search, up-to-date India focused news, P4C classifieds, chat, email, and etc. Besides, they also aimed to be a e-commerce platform by offering the book store and music store online in order to recruit the merchants in India. With the goal as a one-stop shop in India, they have grew into a leading portal in little more than a decade.

Speculation of this possible acquisition is hovering around $1 billion. However, I wonder Google and Yahoo! both are the suitors for this take over since they can grow in India with their own internal resources.