Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia is betting big on Live Documents, a web-enabled Office productivity suite from his start-up firm Instacoll.

"Live Documents will do for documents what Hotmail did for email," Bhatia, Chairman of Instacoll, which had tied up with the Karnataka Government and Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) for its products, told PTI.

It would free documents from confines of the desktop and open up new vistas of collaboration and accessibility,he said.

Live Documents is the Office suite for the next generation, combining the power and responsiveness of the desktop with the collaboration capabilities of the Web. It allows users to create, edit and share documents, spreadsheets and presentations in the browser or on the desktop.

"In three to four years, we have developed an application that is equivalent to Microsoft Office. It has all the components. Live Writer is equivalent to Word while Live spreadsheet is equivalent of excel, Live Presentation is equivalent to Power Point and Live Box equivalent to outlook", he said.

Instacoll has tied up with Karnataka government for Live InBox, a next generation e-mail application and messaging system. Live Inbox was rolled out on a pilot basis in Dakshina Kannada and Tumkur districts in the last six months and now would be launched in all 30 districts of the state, he said.

Nearly 300,000 computers would now have the software which was completely made in India and developed in Bangalore, he said.

Built using Adobe Flash and AIR, the email solution is a unique mix of rich features and great usability and will cater to the needs of both casual users as well as experts with sophisticated requirements, said Sumanth Raghavendra, CEO and co-founder of the company. The company also tied up with VTU for Live Documents, he said.

The best part of application was that it "encompasse both the worlds", Bhatia said, adding it could be used as part of the cloud or on a standalone desktop.

It was 100 per cent compatible with Microsoft Office, he said adding no data could be lost during import or export of data from the other appliction to this one, he said.

The product also had some enhanced features which included integration with Twitter. "Even as a person is making a live persentation, others could tweet during the presentation", he said. The other useful feature was it could be translated into other languages. .

Explaining the features of the application, Bhatia said graphs done could be published anywhere on the Internet. The unique point was that any changes or upgradation in the graph like changes in sales figures would also show up in the published articles.

"It is fully integrated with the web base and hence, is perfect for collaboration," he said. It enables real-time co-editing. A person editing a document at one geographical place can have his work being viewed by others in real time so that everyone is abreast of the latest changes.

The user interface, he said, was better than any other office suite. The simple user interface lends it well for training. Anyone familiar with e-mail and excel could be trained to use the software.

"For the Karnataka government, we have offered an application that comes in both English and Kannada versions -- users can seamlessly switch from one locale to another and use the language. Efforts are on to roll it out in other languages, depending on the demand," said Sumant.

The application, competitively priced, also offers security, confidentiality and reduced risk, he opined. "The government is always concerned over security and our solution is secure," he said.

Going forward, InstaColl hopes the government endorsement would see more enterprises taking to Live Documents.

Currently, it has 75,000 data customers worldwide and plans to tap the banking, insurance, universities, schools, state governments, training institutes wherever there are large consumers of computers.

According to Sumant, the business model targets enterprises, even though it is open to individuals for monthly subscription.

The target consumers are not just current consumers of the leading software giant, but also tapping the new users of the cloud format, he said. Netbook users are also among target consumers for the application.

"We are living in a global world," he said, adding that such an application would allow an employee working in the S to collaborate with a person in India or Switzerland.

The aim was to garner 30 to 40 per cent of the market share in the coming years, he said.