Worldfloat, India's homegrown social networking site with nearly 45 million users, has introduced free video tutorials for schools and university students.

 

 "We have introduced a new feature. We are now offering over 5,000 video courses and tutorials for schools as well as higher education," Worldfloat founder Pushkar Mahatta said.

 

 He said initially the focus is on the courses related to computer science; other areas like accounting and law would gradually be covered.

 

 "This is the first such initiative in India. Nobody else offers such a wide range of video tutorials, and that too free of charge," he said.

 

 Through the tutorials, students can now learn basics of computers as well as advanced languages like JAVA and PHP.

 

 "Normally these computer languages are very expensive to learn from institutes like NIIT. Some of these courses can cost up to Rs.1 lakh a year. Worldfloat is offering these video tutorials for free," he said.

 

 Mahatta said the free video tutorials were also available for schools from class 1 to class 12 for all subjects of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and the Indian Council of Secondary Education (ICSE) boards.

 

 Mahatta said the videos were of high quality and the standards were comparable with the top educational institutions offering such courses.

 

 Apart from social networking, Worldfloat also provides a search engine, free online movies and news services.

 

 It recently also launched a comparison engine to predict stock market prices.

 

 Mahatta said the company would soon introduce video tutorials to prepare for entrance examinations like the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for top engineering and medical institutions and the Common Admission Test (CAT) and Management Aptitude Test (MAT) for management institutes.

 

 "Worldfloat is the first social network in the world to create a social network and video learning school and university on the same platform," Mahatta said.

 

 "Internet technology has become very advanced now. Why should parents be still paying tuition fees when technology can get the tuition videos for free," he added.