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Betting on the small and nascent yet rapidly growing online population, AOL debuted its web portal in India yesterday.

AOL India (www.aol.in), a part of the USD 44.2 billion Time Warner, the world’s largest media and entertainment company, has services similar to its US portal— mobile features, music videos and movie clips, news, sports and e-mail with free and unlimited storage. But there are several visible differences such as channels devoted to Bollywood, cricket and Indian music videos.

AOL has about 238 million users globally, according to ComScore results and wants to compete with rivals Google and Yahoo and MSN to some extent in tapping the billion-strong and rapidly expanding global online community.

Rediff and Yahoo India are two strong players in the Indian online landscape and AOL is aiming to create a niche for itself with a host of new services.

Ron Grant, president and chief operating officer said the Dulles, Virginia-based company has been given a free hand by its parent company to make acquisitions as part of the expansion, in which India will play a "central role.” “AOL.in is our first potential launch outside of North America and Europe, and it shows how committed we are to this market for the long term."

“AOL.in is our first portal launch outside of North America and Europe, and it shows how committed we are to this market for the long term,” said Bangalore based Maneesh Dhir, AOL’s international executive vice president.

With this launch, AOL.in will become the first service worldwide to offer AOL’s next generation e-mail service, a company release said. The e-mail service includes unlimited storage, leading safety and spam protections and mobile protection, something that is not yet available to their American audiences. AOL.in also offers mobile services, including messaging and downloads at the short code 51515, the company said.



With India being the first destination after the US and Europe, AOL will expand to various markets globally and will launch more online services and portals over the next two years, Grant said at the packed news conference to announce the launch of India property. With subscriber numbers falling at its former core dial up Internet Service Provider business, AOL is attempting to transition to ad-based free Web sites in high-growth markets.

Speaking to SDA India, Grant said the portal was in no hurry to make money but wants to establish the brand in India and then wait for the results. About 45 million Indians regularly use the Internet, according to estimates, and their numbers are escalating as more personal computers go online and mobilephone Internet. AOL is banking on projections for rapid online growth in India to 94 million by 2008.



Indian computer market has been slowly but steadily gaining ground and added six million PCs last year. According to Yahoo India, online advertising in India is about USD 60 million and is growing rapidly as more people connect to Internet for everything from checking mails to reading news and buying air tickets to planning holidays.

AOL.in also launched its messaging service in India currently dominated by Yahoo, Microsoft and Google. AOL’s messaging service is even bigger than Yahoo in the US market. AOL also has portals for France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Austria, as well as ones in the United States. Google owns 5 per cent of AOL, with the rest belonging to Time Warner Inc.

AOL's relationship with India dates back to 2002, when the company first started its call centre. In 2004, AOL started its R&D operations in Bangalore followed by a knowledge centre in 2005, which supports AOL's US operations.

Currently AOL has 2000 plus employees in India. Grant said the company will hire more people but did not break the figure.