Warangal techie designs Desi Facebook ‘Duniyastar’

Warangal: Much before the billionaire industrialist Anand Mahindra mooted the idea of a ‘desi’ version of Facebook, a techie in Warangal stumbled upon the idea two years ago and launched an indigenous social networking site.

It may be recalled that the Chairman of Mahindra Group, Anand Mahindra, in his twitter handle on March 26 tweeted ‘it’s time to consider having our own social networking company’ in the backdrop of Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data breach controversy that created a storm among Facebook users.

Nonetheless, Sathish Pendyala, an M Tech (power electronics) graduate hailing from a remote and backward village, Chelpur in Jayashankar Bhupalpally district in Telangana, has designed and founded ‘Duniyastar, presumably the first Indian social networking site, thinking ahead of times.

“I established this in September 2016 with an intention to have India’s own social networking company. It took me two months to design, develop and launch the site with the assistance from a friend Prasad Kasinathuni, who lives in USA,”
he said.
Speaking to The Hans India here Tuesday, Sathish, the MD & CEO of Duniyastar.com, informed that currently more than 3,500 users subscribed to Duniyastar, whose tagline is ‘connecting the world’. Most of them were students pursuing professional courses and based in Warangal, Hyderabad and in the US.

Though he is lacking financial backing for publicity campaign promoting his company, the social networking he created is rich in features.‘Duniyastar is very user friendly and got many interesting features that are not found in Facebook,’ he asserted.

It is designed mainly keeping in view of the needs of students, who often looks for online study material and shares between them. The users can share any type of file formats even the .pdf files, a feature not available in Facebook.
It is available in desktop and android versions, the latter version is available on Google Play Store.

Unique feature of Duniyastar is creating events like parties and festivals. One can invite friends both privately and publicly with due confirmation from them. Videos of any Uniform Resource Locator (URL) link of a web source can be locally on the site without going to the host site, Sathish explained.

The other features include forum, music, blog, videos, event, groups, page, marketplace, find friends and messenger. With Market place one can buy and sell electronics, property, vehicles, homes, office space, know rentals, and avail travels services as the feature serves as a classified section.

In addition to that one can use create and manage advertisements to get their advertisements posted free of cost. “I am updating the software at regular intervals. Future plans include incorporating security features to protect a user’s data effectively and to add advanced futures that help youth,” he revealed.

Sathish, who is working as an insurance advisor having LIC’s Zonal Manager Club Membership, has spent much of his earnings in designing and hosting the site. He is looking for financial support from the Telangana government to promote Duniyastar on massive scale to reach out to the countrymen.

Of late, Duniyastar is gaining popularity among student community as well as business community. Companies like KTM, Hema Hyundai, Safal Bharath foundation, New Science Degree College are its regular supporters.