AOL is launching a separate video portal in India to cater to the growing demand for online video in the country. The offering, to be available within a month, will feature video from Indian as well as international sources, a company spokesman said on Thursday.

The launch in India is one of several announced by AOL Video services, which also detailed similar moves in Taiwan and Canada on Thursday. The company also has plans to launch video portals in the U.K., France and Germany later this year, it said.

AOL's plans in India follows a similar move by competitor Google which earlier this month launched an Indian version of YouTube, its video sharing portal. The new site has content from the YouTube global site, but videos of relevance to Indian audiences have been given greater prominence.

MySpace also launched an Indian version of its social networking site last month.

AOL already has a video service running as part of its main Indian portal www.aol.in. In the last couple of months the videos, that were earlier included under specific topics such as Hollywood and Bollywood, India's own film industry, have now been included in a separate video section that can be searched by users.

The plan now is to set up a version of AOL Video portal for India, the AOL spokesman said. Users will however continue to have the option to access the videos from the main AOL India site. As a relatively new portal in India, AOL is keen on promoting both its main portal and the video portal, he added.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.