Sites such as Facebook and Orkut are becoming increasingly popular around the globe but Minglebox, Desimartini and Shaadi.com are experiencing huge growth in usage in India.

'Previously the most popular social networking sites in India were international, where the common language is English,' said Vivek Pahwa, the founder of Desimartini.com. 'But there is some value and uniqueness to the local languages in India, and culturally Facebook does not reach out to these people. That is now being covered by these other, newer social networks.'

The sites are hesitant to release specific growth statistics but there are signs Indian membership has skyrocketed in recent years.

'It seems social networking sites are pretty popular,' said Subo Ray, president of the Internet and Mobile Association of India, a Mumbai-based group that tracks Indian internet usage.

It's not difficult to see why Indian membership of the sites is proliferating. The number of Indians regularly using the internet has mushroomed lately. According to a report last year by the Internet and Mobile Association, 21 million Indians are active internet users, 950 per cent up on 2000 figures. The report also estimates that the number of active users will double by next year.

'Indians are spending more and more time online,' Mr Pahwa said. 'The generation that is now in school spends more time on the internet than they do watching television, which is a very dramatic shift from five years ago.'

The world's leading online matrimonial service, Shaadi.com, takes its name from the Hindi word for marriage. Since it was set up in 1997, it claims to have facilitated one million marriages for people of Indian origin. For its 10 million active users still seeking a match, Shaadi.com is a hit because it breaks down the south Asian community into search categories that Indian suitors-to-be have used for generations, such as religious groupings, castes, professions, and countries of residence. So a bride-to-be could search for a Jat Sikh male based in Canada, under the age of 25, and then refine her search to target only dentists.

With the Indian diaspora spread across the globe, from Tanzania to Malaysia, Shaadi.com serves to connect the far-flung to the motherland, as a significant number of its users live abroad.

More recently, new Indian-oriented social networking sites have caught the eyes of investors for putting a modern spin on a localised and highly culturally specific market by targeting only Indians in India. The start-up Minglebox.com, which began operations last year, secured US$7 million from Sequoia Capital India, a venture capital firm with ties to Silicon Valley that has poured funds into Google in the past.

Bangalore-based Minglebox was founded by several young Indian Institute of Technology graduates seeking to connect young Indians with common music and media interests. And playing off the popularity of campus communities, Minglebox is trying to provide a virtual space for college students to interact, perhaps mimicking the successes of Facebook.

Desimartini.com, also set up last year, takes western-incubated social networking and repackages it for India-based users, using elements similar to Google's Orkut - but the site milks Indian youths' obsession with mobile technology, offering free SMSs across the country and allowing users to update their profiles by mobile phone.

'We tried to create an ideal social networking platform for Indians living in India. People can keep in touch with their friends and interact with new people,' said Mr Pahwa.

Yaari.com, another site that began operating last year, promotes itself as 'created by Indian youth, for Indian youth' and membership is available by invitation only.

Although many of the new start-ups haven't hit the one-million user threshold, their impact is certainly being felt on the subcontinent.

'In my opinion such sites facilitate the spread of Indian values but have a negative impact on Indian culture as well,' said Kalyan Banga, an internet expert and analyst for AMI Partners.

'In many cases users upload fake videos and photographs to create a false profile and use it to lure friends and at times even matrimony, with disastrous consequences for unsuspecting users,' Mr Banga said.

In June the right-wing Hindu Shiv Sena party threatened Mumbai internet cafe owners who allowed their clients to criticise Hindu values on Orkut. Some of Shiv Shena's militant members have been known to halt screenings of 'overly sexual' films and decry young Indians' absorption of western ways.

Yet Indian institutions such as arranged marriages are benefiting from the new technology. Wedding alliances are an age- old phenomenon, and even in recent decades couples involved in 'love weddings' have been stigmatised in many traditional Indian communities - both here and abroad.

Ms Chopra seems to have no complaints about her match made via the internet. 'He's a very nice person,' she said. 'It worked out very well.'