Banyan Netfaqs, the publisher of Afaqs.com, Afaqs Reporter and TheMobileIndian.com has launched ThePodium.in as a micro networking website for the Advertising, Marketing and Media Community in India. The site is currently launched in beta and according to an official communiqué sent by the company, ThePodium.in is a platform that will enable people to share and spread their ideas and help the community know more.

Through ThePodium, users can upload their pictures, follow friends, and share stuffs that you wish to. To make it easy for users to get going, Afaqs has created a data bridge between ThePodium and a user’s LinkedIn account which would enable them to pull in their LinkedIn profile into ThePodium.

Speaking to India Digital Review about the objective behind this initiative, Sandeep Vij, Co Founder and Director of Afaqs, said, “Afaqs has been a leader in serving the information needs of the advertising and marketing community in India for a while. There is a huge difference between specialist and a generalist. ThePodium is a service that is meant to connect people specifically from that community. We felt that there was a need for the Indian marketing community to share and spread their ideas and help the community know each other well. All that can’t be done on a website and hence we came up with ThePodium.”

According to Vij, the platform will gain its popularity as more people participate in it. “The Indian advertising, media and marketing community today comprises of around 600,000 to 800,000 professionals and hence as a platform for this community, ThePodium has immense potential to grow in numbers,” added Vij. Sandeep Vij further said that Afaqs.com attracts more than three million page views and 300,000 unique visitors per month and he would like all of them to be a part of ThePodium as well.

This is the company’s third online property after Afaqs.com and TheMobileIndian.com. Afaqs first launched TelecomYatra in November 2009 as a B2B (business-to-business) website to provide latest developments on voice, VAS (value added services), technology and allied sectors. But the site was later re-launched TheMobileIndian with a reoriented towards a B2C (business-to-consumer) future.

Afaqs is currently headquartered in Noida, India, with branches in Bangalore and Mumbai. Established as agencyfaqs, on September 28, 1999, the site was rebranded as afaqs on May 2008. Seedfund is an investor in afaqs.