Meet Pintile: India’s Pinterest

By Tech Wire Asia | 2 April, 2012

Whoever is counting the Pinterest clones should add one more to the list: Pintile. An India based site, Pintile draws more than just a name from Pinterest.

As per PR here’s what Pintile is about.

Pintile is an online bulletin board exclusively for India, inspired by Pinterest.com. We are aiming to depict India in the form of images where people “PIN” their cultures, styles, ideas and much more. India is full of diversity, 28 states in India have their own cultures, rituals, style, food and habits.

Pintile offers people a way to connect with others to share their experiences by pinning them onto their boards that can be personalized for each person. People can also LIKE pins, and even REPIN them on their bulletin board. While the website has a few guidelines, people are free to pin whatever they like

Would it PIN?

Pintile has four readymade boards you can follow – Bollywood, Cricket, Politics and Humor. You can’t go wrong with that list but adding Hot Chicks to that list wouldn’t be a bad idea. Seems like the Bollywood board is filling it up for now.

For those who want to criticize, there isn’t much of innovation in Pintile. It looks just like Pinterest, its name even has a pin in it and the concept isn’t dissimilar to Pinterest either. Call me color blind but the logo borrows the same colors. Should that be a turn-off? Probably not.

But it’s a clone?

Here’s my spiel about clones. First there were Amazon clones for India. Then there were Groupon clones in India. Everybody cribbed about the lack of innovation and imagination. If there is an idea and if it’s making money and if it’s easily implementable then it will be copied. Period. There is no way to get around that. And there is really no point in fretting about it.

Yes Pintile is a clone. But it is serving a niche market. I have been in and out of Pinterest because I couldn’t find anything that piqued my interest. Pintile with just the four boards made me spend more time in a day than I have spent on Pinterest ever since it was launched. So yes. Pintile is a clone but it’s a needed clone. Now it should take some load off my Facebook for funny pictures.

On Facebook you might miss this, but on Pintile you can’t miss this now, can you?