15 members every minute!

Do you know Gen Y’s “Big Adda”?

Social networking sites are the in-thing today for youth. And for Indian youth, who want to connect with their own ilk, you can’t do better than log on to Bigadda.com.

A Reliance ADA group initiative, Bigadda has become an addiction for most of the youngsters to share their views online, chat, get in touch with long lost peers and to increase their social circuit of friends. Members can also post videos & photographs on this site.

An official release stated that by March 2008, Bigadda will be making the transition from the web on to the mobile and introduce music very shortly thereby increasing the current user interest portfolio beyond videos and photos. Going forward over the next 2 quarters bigadda.com will launch major innovations in the access area across Wireless and Broadcast channels.

Bigadda.com has hit the straps right from the first click, garnering over 1.24 million members in its four months, and is aiming at building up 10 million strong Indian communities by 2010. According to an official estimate, 15 Indians join this site every minute.

Rajesh Sawhney, President of Reliance Entertainment said, “I believe that social networking platforms are for real. It is becoming the centre of their social graph. We are in the very early stages of this phenomenon. It will take off with the evolution of broadband. When we talk of social networking sites there are two aspects. One is social network while the other is social media. Social networking sites focus on connectivity and communication. Social media sites look at user generated, user rated content.”

“The user is either a creator or a filter or a participant of content. Bigadda looks at all these aspects. We believe that there is a huge space for an Indian platform. We launched it four months back and are satisfied with the response. In 2008 competition will emerge but we are confident of the innovations that we will be doing. Social networking will also depend on what is done in the mobile space.”

Using sites like Bigadda for interaction is currently a huge trend and very cool, for youth across geographical boundaries. Within India the top 20 cities account for half of Bigadda users, while 40% of the users come from small towns like Tuticorin, Bhilai, Amritsar, Guwahati, Surat, Nasik etc. The balance users are from countries like Sri Lanka, Pakistan and NRIs in Dubai, US and UK.

Siddhartha Roy, Chief Operating Officer of BigAdda says, getting a user base of 1 million users in 4 months time was “remarkable by itself”. According to the 2007 NASSCOM Report, it is estimated that by 2010 there will be 20 million broadband subscribers, up from 1 million and 100 million Internet users, as compared to 36 million today. These numbers are going to go up and the curve will only get steeper for Bigadda.

The prognosis is not unrealistic. There is a growth of 240% in the number of unique visitors per month for youth networking websites. Virtual hangouts play a key role, because it gives users the space to be amongst friends and peers, while sharing an image of their own, which they would like to project.

What’s hot @ Bigadda
• 78% of the users are between 16-27 yrs
• 11% consider themselves PHAT (pretty hot and tempting) and 28% athletic
• Average height 5’.6"-5’.7" (Male) and 5’.2"(female) 25% with brown eyes
• 65% do not conform to smoking and alcohol, 62% hate politics and 17% prefer to be liberal
• 79% are single and average looking Indian spending over 16 minutes onsite per session
• 40% of users consume videos and share them – create their own mash-ups thereby initiating comments /discussions and thereby networking
• 57% of the users have created their photo galleries
• Created 15,000 ADDAs (equivalent of communities) which others are joining thus expressing themselves.
Compared to other global social networking sites in India, Bigadda is more younger and therefore more hipper. Most of the global sites have around 60% under 25 years of age - 35% single and 62% come there for friends and 20% for dating, while on Bigadda apart from building their network through profiles, users also connect on interests (people with similar likes and thought processes).

Online networking a great way to change your life, make it crisper, entertaining, be in the current trend as well as to build your social circuit.

The first Indian Youth Network with all forms of expression under one hat, BigAdda.com enables networking based on individuals (friends, and friends of friends) and interests (self-expression by create-upload-share of videos, photos, music). Some of the features of this Youth destination include Blogs and Scribbles, which help the users express, comment and connect, ADDAs (communities) and Forums – all of these catering to ‘identity creation’ and ‘self-expression’. The site gives the youth an opportunity to embrace digital technology to express themselves and use social networks to perform more interactive functions than just sending messages…….

About Reliance ADA Group

The promoters, the Reliance ADA Group, is among India’s top three private sector business houses, with a market cap of over Rs 3,00,000 crore (over US$ 75 billion), net worth of Rs 40,000 crore (US$ 10 billion), and turnover of about Rs 30,000 crore (US 7.5 bn).

The group has a customer base of over 100 million, the largest in India and a shareholder base of over 8 million, among the largest in the world. Through its products and services, the Reliance - ADA Group touches the life of 1 in 10 Indians every single day. With over 1,00,000 employees, the business presence of the Group extends to over 10,000 towns and 500,000 villages in India, and 5 continents across the world