The portal will enable family members to communicate with each other through e-mails, voice mails and exclusive family chats. Families can maintain a calender of events which would serve as reminders of special occasions. Also, you can create your family tree on your personal site and keep in touch with your roots and your growing kin. More? Family albums can be created by uploading scanned photographs of family members.

Every family, who registers with the portal can create its own site on the portal. The closed user group (CUG) can be accessed through a password. Registration on the portal, targeted at Web-enabled families whose members are disbursed, is free of cost.

The company plans to focus on member acquisition for the next four to five months and will concentrate on advertising revenues only after building a critical mass of around 50,000 members, according to Arun Agarwal, co-promoter and director, iConnect Technologies. Till then, the portal is being funded through a large round of angel funding to the tune of Rs 3 crore from individual investors in the venture capital field from India, Singapore and the US. The company, started with an authorised capital of Rs 1 crore, is planning to go for brand-evaluation and first round of VC funding in a month's time.

The portal has tied-up with e-tail site FabMart.com to facilitate e-commerce. It enables family members to send each other gifts across the country and world by choosing from an array of products offered on the portal. To strengthen its revenue model, the company is planning to get into the click-and-mortar business by introducing certain fee-based products and services in the next three-four months. It will pilot the fee-based service in one city and roll it out to other cities in phases. The company expects to break-even in two years after the launch, said Agarwal.

The brand will be marketed through offline advertising and incentive-based promos in cyber cafes and other places where there is a concentration of Internet users. Though the portal is technologically similar to US portal myfamily.com, it has been given a Indian touch in terms of the language used and the inclusion of Indian festivals like `Holi' and `Diwali' in the events reminder calender.