Alok Mittal at Venturewoods refers to recent buzz/rumour about Facebook being valuated at 2 billion $. Certainly Facebook valued at $ 2 billion is a little too high and if one does calculate it should be around $ 750 million. IMHO these valuation are not a sign of bubble. I think these days anything that is not understood well is termed as a bubble given that we had a history with a bubble.
Alok mentions that this may get a few in India to roll out something simillar to it. Yeah he could be right but I am not too thrilled about it. India is more than 18+ months behind the valley & other places in web 2.0. Sure blogs picked up & there are a couple of simples aggregators around but then that how far things have gone. Whil valley already has many now 2nd generation of web 2.0 entreprenuers but here in India we are yet to see atleast one good web 2.0 play.
Someone might just plainly copy myspace or facebook without getting to know what it takes to build these plays and that kind of an approach I am sure goes nowhere. Anyone remembers vQube built out of IISc to compete with Skype way back in 2004. I have not heard of any one single person in India who used it so far. Skype made a few billion $ exit but where is vQube now ? But if someone builds myspace for India the right way then that would no doubt lead to terrific amount of value creation for everyone 🙂 Did someone hear Subhash Chandra say "It’s the beginning of the end of television" a few days ago. Myspace for India could be very well positioned in a few years for Subhash to do a Murdoch.
As Alok I would love to see some kick ass action in this space in India. One of the primary pillars of web 2.0 is its colloborative & sharing nature. Infact the key element of any technology culture like in the Valley is that the folks there are super connected to each other. That is one key thing I feel we are missing in India. To help create such a culture a few of us have been trying to put up a barcamp together here in hyderabad which is to be held tommorow. Theme of this barcamp is "web 2.0 and the next generation internet". We might also jump into the barcamp at bangalore as well. It is been very hard for us to reach out to interested people but now we have close to 150 registered to attend the barcamp. Hop on to the event by registering yourself in the wiki, it would be a fun event to attend.
mtrajan.com 
Interestingly, we are working on a facebook model in India.
The launch should be around next month. 🙂
Would expect a review blog post, to help us make it more popular.
We are not a service base company like Skype. We are technology providers. We are very firm about what we are and what what we intend to do with our technology, whether you agree or disagree that its the best way. We have licensed our technology to a few portals and also corporates which I cannot disclose. So please do not think you know everything that is happening. Well, regarding the customer base for those portals, it is definitely more than a couple of million. COUPLE OF MILLION VQUBE USERS.
See http://www.avashya.com for complete web 2.0 coverage in India.