Bangalore: AOL India has launched an online and mobile-web product for Indian colleges called CoolAge that allows each college to publish articles, stories, pictures and videos of all the activities that happen in their respective colleges.

Borne out of a research that AOL India conducted last year with young Indians in 18 cities seeking to find out their internet/mobile web consumption pattern and their need for hyper-local content, CoolAge was launched as a pilot in March 2011. The site went live only in September 5, 2011. With more than 185 colleges on its website including several top colleges in the country, such as IITs, BITs, IIMs, LSR, and many more and have more than 250 reporters across India.

Parathasarathy Madhukar, AOL India, said, “The name is a word play for ‘college’ and alsoplays an eras like Stone Age and Ice Age -  now we are in the CoolAge – the college years that are perhaps the coolest period in most people’s lives.”

Students from each college who are editors of their college pages upload content and information daily regarding myriad of events including a build up to a cultural festival, a debate, a Model United Nations event, a theatre, an arts performance, a rock concert, profiling great professors, a famous alumni, and many more. The setting of each event varies from the classroom to the auditorium and from the canteen to the sports field.

Madhukar added, “Our research showed that there are 43 million college students in India and college extra-curricular activities are core to every college student’s life. Only some of the top institutions and colleges are lucky to get media coverage but most of the colleges in India go under the radar. But for students, representing their college in an extracurricular activity or going up on stage, is such a big achievement and we want to capture and spread that glory - this is how CoolAge was born.”

CoolAge is also an online college magazine for every college and brings together all these colleges under one website, enabling the students to track other colleges’ activities across India from anywhere in the world. The editorial teams from colleges, prolific student writers, and students with a creative streak, have signed up on the platform to cover campus activities, news, buzz and events from their colleges.

Through his platform, AOL India has also created job opportunities for hundreds of students. Madhukar added, “The selected students from each of the colleges are taken in as interns who contribute articles regarding their respective colleges, on a regular basis. These students are paid a monthly stipend.”