Karm Singh
Desitouch
www.desitouch.com
London
Age: 25
Imagine a Web site that's a blend of iTunes, MySpace, and YouTube, but stocked with Bollywood movies, soundtracks, and Bhangra music, and you get an idea of what Karm Singh is up to with Desitouch. A British-born Indian who built his first Web site at 16, Singh is fiercely proud of his cultural heritage yet firmly planted in the high-tech West.
His inspiration, dreamed up while studying computer science at King's College, London, was to combine the two. Even the site's name, which juxtaposes “desi,” the Indian word for “tradition,” with a “.com” suffix, fits the bill. Visitors can download South Asian music and videos in a variety of formats, and upload their own media from PCs or mobile phones. Singh aims to make money from transaction fees and advertising.
The self-financed Desitouch.com launched only a few months ago, but Singh expects to reach 100,000 hits a month by December. “I aim to be the world's No. 1 South Asian entertainment Web site,” he says. At this rate, he might get there.
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