India's WorldFloat steps up to challenge Facebook

On WorldFloat.com, users can do everything they do on Facebook plus play games, watch streaming videos and movies, as well as listen to music and radio stations, says its inventor, Pushkar Mahatta. Traffic on the website, launched less than a year ago, picked up over the past three months after a publicity exercise and is well on its way to notching up 10 million users by next month.

It has already received buyout offers of nearly US$300 million, according to Mahatta, whose core business is real estate in and around New Delhi.

What Facebook does not have – and which perhaps is WorldFloat's biggest attraction – are online competitions, which allow users to win cash.

“On WorldFloat, people can earn up to $185 through online treasure hunt contests ... they buy an online ticket for 100 rupees to take part,” Mahatta, 37, said. A free version is available, he added. Players stand to win 1,000 rupees.

The website works by synthesising top websites into one with a unique interface and functions for its users, who are spread across 1,600 cities in the world.

Mahatta describes the invention of Hotmail as the Internet’s first virtual networking revolution, which connected two people. Then came Facebook, Orkut and Myspace, which allow a closed group of people to stay in touch with one other.

“WorldFloat.com is the harbinger of the third revolution. Users can communicate with anyone anywhere in the world without being restricted by circles,” he said.

“The oldness of friends was covered by Facebook, the newness of friends is being covered by us. There is freedom of communication as anyone can ping or tap on anyone’s picture and start chatting, whether that someone is a friend or not.”

Currently, WorldFloat is adding about 100,000 users a day. But 80 per cent of its members are from India’s small cities and towns, a key market also being targeted by Facebook and Orkut.

The importance of this market is clear from Facebook’s latest user data, which showed that users in India and Brazil drove much of the 23 per cent rise in its monthly active user numbers in the first quarter of this year over the same period last year.

Monthly active Facebook users in India doubled to 78 million over the period, but the emergence of a new challenger in WorldFloat could shrink market share for established brands.

Mahatta is excited at the prospect of doing battle with the likes of Facebook. “We plan to introduce a new module on WorldFloat.com every three to six months,” he said.

“For example, a user will be able to do a virtual event in any city in the world for free. The number of cities covered by our platform will gradually increase to about 30,000.”

While other websites generate revenue through the profile page model, WorldFloat.com hopes to take a faster route to profits with virtual billboards for users.

The idea for WorldFloat, Mahatta said, came from his love of spiritual philosophy, which taught “me to perceive the unseen connection between all people and diverse things in this world”.

“The key is to be able to think of unthinkable ideas with mega world commercial potential and then build them cheap,” said the ambitious psychology graduate.

“Anything that connects and does not restrict will be successful.”