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Social Media has taken off big time in India. Isn’t it? And lots of you want to know about this new age media. Lots of you want to know how this new age super power can be used in India. At the core of this media is the fact that most of the tools for social media come for free. You can shoot your question straight to a minister in India (at-least to some) and get an answer from him, if the minister finds it worthy enough. But, if you have some queries about Social Media in India, who do you ask? Every second person on twitter claims to be a social media champion. Who do you trust? So, I thought of coming up with a list of people, to whom you can ask your questions and be rest assured, these people will come out with the right answers at most times than not.

I tried to do a little bit of search here and there and have come up with this list. I may miss out a few important people, so please feel free to tell me through your comments.

• Gaurav Mishra : Better known for his social media blog http://www.gauravonomics.com/ ,Gaurav is the best known and most followed Indian as far as social media goes. He is now the CEO of 2020social which helps clients leverage social technologies to achieve strategic business objectives .
• Rajesh Lalwani : Founder at Blogworks.in, he has been the brain behind many successful social media campaigns. His company also provides online reputation management services as well as social media workshops.
• Kiruba Shankar: CEO at Business Blogging private limited, his company provides A to Z of what social media has to offer. Following him on twitter will give you a good idea about the various social media assignments being taken up by him.
• Nimesh Shah : CEO at Windchimes India, Nimesh is well known for his humour. He has even written a social media e book available for free download on the Windchimes website. His company also provides Online Reputation Managment as well as Social Media marketing services.
• Rajiv Dingra : Founder of one of India’s most followed blogs,WatBlog, Rajiv also runs his social media operations under the hood of WATConsult. The services of WATConsult can be seen here.
• Mahesh Murthy : India’s only representative in the 140 conference, Mahesh is the CEO of Pinstorm. Pinstorm is now one of India’s fastest growing Digital Media firm. Please have a look at their blog here.
• Dave Evans : Author of Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day, Dave Evans is an American living in India and working for 2020social with Gaurav and Gautam Ghosh.
• Dina Mehta : Co founder at Mosoci, Dina’s firm boasts of some very big clients and you can always ask her a question or two on twitter.
• Puja Madan: Founder at Sulmoz, her blog posts are a pleasure to read. She is very good at posting a question or two through her twitter updates and getting crowd-sourced answers.
• Amit Klein : A product manager at Directi, Amit is more into Web Analytics than social media. However, having talked to him about social media, I would say, his understanding of social media is much more balanced than most others.Amit is also the visiting faculty on Social Media at Indian School of Business, SPJain and NMIMS.

Update1(Feb 3rd 2010):

On the recommendation of Puja, I am adding two more people to this exciting list.

• Sanjay Mehta : CEO of Social Wavelength, Sanjay’s social media insights are very well appreciated in the social media circles in India.  His company provides social media consulting, training and monitoring services.
• Sampad Swain : Runs the very well known Interactive Marketing blog, Sampad’s views on the Internet are damn interesting.

Here is a list of some people you can  follow/contact (They may not be too social media savvy themselves) to get your social media/Web 2.0 applications ( Facebook Fan pages(FBML), Facebook applications, Twitter Based Application, Other complex web applications) done at very good rates.

• Vikash Kumar: Specially focussed on facebook applications, Vikash is also giving out some good facebook application ideas. You can mail him here.
• Niraj Nawanit: Focussed on the more complex web applications, Niraj is well versed in doing data mining based applications. You wont find him on the social mediums that easily. Mail him here.
• Swapnil Kumar: Focussed majorly on Drupal, WordPress based websites and beautiful facebook fanpages  Swapnil has a full team of developers doing a great job at decorating social media in India. Contact him here.
• Mitesh Ashar : A twitter-holic, Mitesh is very good at getting some brilliant UI designs and WordPress themes done. His company, is currently working on a whole array of twitter-based products. Mail him here.

This was  just a quick list of some of the best known social media champions in India and of some of the good web/social media application developers, I know. Please let me know about other social media influencers and Social Media based application developers in India.

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1. Social Media Marketing in India
2. Social Media – the Big Bang.!!
3. Social Media – India’s new sweetheart!!!
4. The Insurance sector and Social media
5. Social Media Presence of Indian Telecom Majors- Part 3- Website and Blog