Bhatia in Bangalore on Wednesday. (PTI)

Bangalore, April 13: Computer whizkid Sabeer Bhatia launched InstaColl ? a product designed to transform business communications world-wide ? in Bangalore today.

InstaColl will enable users to share computer documents and Powerpoint presentations across multiple locations during real-time communication over the Internet. It allows teams to work on a shared document real-time, looking at the same data.

?Real-time collaboration is the key. It has the potential to boost the company?s productivity. After telephones and e-mail, the third wave is real-time collaboration. InstaColl has been made to add an immediacy factor to the information sharing process by enabling instant collaborative sessions. Its one-button simplicity enables the users to launch powerful collaboration sessions with a single click from their Microsoft Office application,? Bhatia said.

?With this new product, users have an inexpensive way to immediately share presentations and documents in both high and low bandwidth environments securely. It will prove a boon for companies involved in outsourcing. Most of the offices of these companies are situated offshore. This (InstaColl) definitely is the next step of productivity applications within companies,? he added.

This product is undergoing pilot tests and will be launched commercially next month. It will be marketed by a company with the same name as the product.

Bhatia, who has invested in the company and worked with its founders, Sumanth Raghavendra and Kaushal Cavale, will take over as the board chairman soon. ?This company is at a nascent stage. We will raise the finance later this year,? he said. He declined to disclose his investment in the company.

InstaColl will be bundled with products of companies such as IBM, Intel and Sun Microsystem soon. Once the software is installed in a computer, a Microsoft document can be shared with more than 100 users real-time across geographical boundaries over the Internet. If other users do not have Microsoft 2000 installed on their computers, InstaColl provides a link to enable them to see and work on the document. The product enables the user to chat, share voice and has videoconferencing facility. ?This is the only tool of its kind worldwide that is integrated with the Microsoft office suite. The choice of Microsoft Office suite is simply because it has more than 400 million users across the world,? he said.

Bhatia, who sold Hotmail to Microsoft for $400 million, said he foresaw a huge market for the new product. ?Our pricing will be different for small businesses and corporate enterprises. For the companies, we can offer dedicated servers,? he said.

The new company has offered free download of InstaColl that would click with Microsoft World, Excel and PowerPoint applications.