Rediff (NSDQ: REDF) is investing an undisclosed amount in Mumbai-based Twitter-clone site Vakow....the service allows for users to receive SMS from friends and send updates to friends via SMS, like Twitter. The website was started by IIT Mumbai alumni Rahul Gupta and Amit Upadhyay in October 2007….lets see how far they go in differentiating the service from Twitter…right now, even profile pages look like Twitter pages.

Update: Snigdha spoke to the founders: “How will/does Vakow make money? ‘We don’t make any money now,’ comes Gupta’s candid response, very quickly. But they hope to and advertising seems to be the chief revenue channel they have in mind. The two didn’t earn a salary from their business until 2-3 months ago, which is actually when the Rediff investment happened. Otherwise, cost of operations are pretty low though an exact break-up isn’t available.