LinkedIn, a business networking site with over 11 million users, which helps professionals and business users broaden their connections through a trusted network, is becoming a rage with the Indian diaspora in the US.

The website reports that India is currently generating the third-highest number of monthly sign-ups, after the US and the UK. “India is in our top five countries in the worldwide market,” says Elisabeth O’Donnell, director (International) of LinkedIn. Started by two Stanford graduates, Konstantin Guericke and Reid Hoffman, in 2003, the company became profitable in March last year and closed its third round of funding in January for $12.8 million.

Already, it has become an indispensable networking tool for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists (VCs). One such is Ganesh Rengaswamy, the person in charge of India investments at California-based VC Greylock Partners. Part of his work routine involves going through a sea of business proposals and zeroing in on a paying proposition. The LinkedIn website helps members take their professional contacts with them wherever they go. It also helps them reach out to contacts with upto three degrees of separation, thereby widening their network.

The mine of contacts is proving irresistible to resource-hungry entrepreneurs. Says A.G. Karunakaran, president and co-founder of a Silicon Valley-based software firm GDA Technologies, who uses the site to provide leads to his sales force, “Now, the activity has increased a whole lot as a lot of my important contacts are on this website, too.” Based on loyal users like him, the company has already projected its revenues to rise to between $70 million and $100 million by 2008-end.