The world is going gaga about web 2.0 and how building strong online communities is the way to becoming a successful Intrapreneur (Internet Entrepreneur). But could things be different? Could strong communities already exist in the Indian web space and we still haven’t stumbled upon them?

In an exclusive research (if we can call it research! ;)) WATblog has discovered and in some cases just known certain community forums that are doing exceedingly well at building interactivity among members and attracting new members. But we also felt that not many of them were funded or were making huge money (atleast their website gives that impression)

So here is a review of Forum Driven Communities in India

Pagalguy.com - Founded in 2002 Probably one of the most well known communities around for MBA aspirants. pagalguy.com has been around for a while now and has in the recent past managed to come up with exclusive online content pertaining to MBA schools and even exclusive interviews with the Management guru’s like Philip Kotler. Though Pagalguy.com has moved beyond just being a forum, even today its lifeline is the forum with over 77000 members. It also with biggies like TOP MBA, Manhattan GMAT. As on date  full time editorial team here in place who is doing the interviews and redefining the perceptions of MBA education in India. Also the members of PaGaLGuY.com comprise over 50 per cent of the students in the top B-schools of the country. Probably the only forum to boast of such a success.

While going through Pagalguy i thought its all great what they have achieved but what is their business model? Only advertising? maybe.. but the scalability of their idea is still to be tested.. Their mission states they want to be the largest community for management eduation.. After all you haven’t arrived on the Internet scene unless you talk in Millions ;). So i feel Pagalguy in the future would either be acquired (makes sense for an MBA coaching company like IMS or Career launcher) or would have to further reinvent its current model to somehow add more value and generate a revenue stream other than advertising. But all in all the most professionally run community forums around.

India-Forums.com - The 90’s saw a boom in the television industry with the number of TV channels escalating and with it came the need for good TV content. But it was not until the "K" effect (Serials and show with the letter K) in the new millenium that Television stars became larger than life and a household name. So its no surprise to me that India-forum which is a forum regarding all the television serials on air has more than 1,70,000 registered members!

And its not only the number of registered members.. The popularity of this site hit me when i saw the statistic 1492 members online right now! Now thats a huge number of members at a given point in time..
As far as content is concerned India-forum discusses serials from sony, star plus, star one, Sahara One, Sabe TV and also international channels (probably because this site could have decent traffic from NRI’s as well).

But what i saw missing on the site was genuine banner ads! They only had google ads! Its seems like no interactive advertising agency has thought of marketing to this huge community! Its a pity that online media planning doesn’t extend beyond the main portals.

IndiaMike.com - A travel community forum which to me was quite unknown! But on going through the forum i realised that this forum is probably the best one around (even better than the aggresively marketed community OkTataByeBye which is supported by Makemytrip.com). The forum has over 11000 members which is not the most amazing number but whats interesting to note is that there are over 200000 posts and tons of pictures!
The forum started in 2001 by Mike a foriegner in love with India. In May 2006 he sold the site to an India Arjun. Whoever the owner to me this site looks like a fantastic free redource for travel another forum which has not found many advertisers even though it looks like one of the best around in its own segment.

Exforsys.com - Exforsys describes itself as a community of developers specializing in C, C++, C#, Java, J2EE, .NET, PeopleSoft, SAP, Siebel, Oracle Apps., Data warehousing, Oracle/SQL Server/DB2 and Testing, who have come together to share Source code, Articles, Certification details, Interview questions, Job postings, Trainings and on-line tutorials. Though the site cannot be termed as india specific it still has a lot of Indian content and on looking up the domain registration details i found that the site was indeed owned by an Indian in US. The forum boasts of over 25000 members and is the most comprehensive resource for IT be it tech stuff or jobs! But yet again ads limited to Google ads.

CHRMGlobal.com - A forum for the HR community! now thats something new so i was very interested in reading and i found it to be up there as far as quality content was concerned. Though i must admit that by the looks of it the forum is new and would have rather low traffic numbers compared to the others but gave me the impression that its already starting to build a comunity. Another such forum is Hrmeet.com which though equally good but isnt a standalone forum and is backed by Clickjobs.com a Job site of Bharatmatrimony hence it doesn’t figure here as its community may not be organically developed.
As CHRMGlobal is pretty new the question of ads didn’t arise but it will be interesting to see where it goes.

All in all this experience of going through so many sites left me with a feeling that though all these forums were pretty good none of them were being claimed or being percieved as the next big thing or good business ventures! I think what the next step for these forums would be to provide value added services for a small price and see if any alternative revenue generating possibility is available which could then be leveraged to pitch to the investors. Until this happens most of these sites will remain just advertising driven free forums.

If you know any more such forums please comment..

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