Networking is in vogue and fortunately there are lot of portals offering either social or professional networking services. And as these are competing in this space for a larger piece of the pie, each one of them is constantly innovating to woo their target market. Here in this section, Poora Poona will bring to you the most recent players in this domain every edition and will try to understand their USP. We will talk to them to know how they are different and how is ‘networking’ contributing in making world  more collaborative . Starting with Apnacircle.com this fortnight, this portal is co-founded by Sabeer Bhatia (the hotmail guy) and Yogesh Bansal and has both sides of the coin to offer - social as well as professional.

Registering on Apnacircle.com is a time consuming activity. As it is a social and a professional networking site one needs to create a personal and professional profile. There are lot of fields ranging from your likes, dislikes to your professional candidature in terms of your education, current job profile, professional achievements, etc. The unique feature of this website is the Recommendations provided by your peers in your network. Apnacirlce has an innovative way of rewarding people with points who are very active on the portal. Points can be redeemed to get electronic gadgets like Mp3 player, flashdrive, bluetooth dongle, USB charger, etc. or cellphones from Nokia and Motorola.

PPT: Why Apnacircle.com? What is Apna-circle's USP?

Yogesh: In a world where networking is the buzzword, a particulate need was felt to bridge the gap between social and professional lives of people. Here comes in a portal which was conceived to bridge this gap where people can meet friends and professionals on a common platform. Apnacircle.com helps people make new friends and professional acquaintances and thus make their social life more active, interesting and more fruitfully rewarding.

Apnacircle.com's USP lies in the fact that it is India's only online social and professional networking site that is created to connect people with friends and even unknown acquaintances that live, work or stay round them. Some of ApnaCircle USP's are multi-scraping, unlimited photos upload, customized messages, and recommendations on professional level.

PPT: What is your target audience?

Yogesh: ApnaCircle.com strives to create a pertinent user base targeting the age group of 15-35 but we do not just want to be bound to this particular age group, what we strive is to make, is a nation wide network where we are looking forward to the educated, well informed, enlightened young Indian to be a part of ApnaCircle.com family. Apart from that having a global edge gives an added advantage to the users to interact with people all over the globe and thus enhance their network.

PPT: What differentiates ApnaCircle.com from other social portals? How will a youngster benefit?

Yogesh: My second answer covers the differentiation between us and our competitors where the basic criterion of difference between us and other social networking portals is the fact that ApnaCircle.com is the only one of its kind portal which maintains Equilibrium between socializing and professionalizing. In here users get double the advantage at a common platform which one, helps people enhance their social circle and second, help them secure a better future for them through the exhaustive professional field operation.
A youngster when logs onto ApnaCircle.com, can at a common platform meet people and share his experiences through scraps, photos and messages. Plus he can enhance his future and get good professional opportunities through recommendations from people who matter and have for himself exhaustive job listings too.

PPT: When did Apnacircle.com formally launch? Who are behind it?

Yogesh: ApnaCircle.com is still in its soft launch phase that means we are yet to launch it formally. ApnaCircle.com would be launched soon in some days which would be up for all of you to see. Apnacircle.com is a global brand promoted by the legend of information technology, Sabeer Bhatia along with me. People who have invested in ApnaCircle.com are Myself, Sabeer Bhatia and Curtis Hawn .

PPT: We have not seen Apnacircle.com advertising on other high traffic website? Any reason why? How do you plan to promote your website?

Yogesh: As explained earlier, ApnaCircle.com is still in its soft launch phase and thus we are looking forward to launch it pretty soon. Thus as a gradual phase of expansion, we can assure you that you would be looking at ApnaCircle.com a lots more in the coming months, where at this point of time we are getting good responses through word of mouth publicity. As per the promotion is concerned, rest assured it would be a humongous one but for that you have to wait a bit longer.

PPT: What do you envision for ApnaCircle.com as a community portal?

Yogesh: The vision that I have for ApnaCircle.com would be to make it a path breaking initiative which would definitely be changing the Indian web space forever. Adding to that the experience of having Sabeer Bhatia on board speaks volume about itself. An initiative which has many revolutionary intricate, ApnaCircle.com would definitely be changing the Indian Web Experience and hence would give an emancipated overview to the average Indian web user, who would definitely not need to look west regarding his quest for networking.