America Online, the Internet arm of media giant Time Warner, said it will expand "aggressively" worldwide after stepping into Asia for the first time with the launch of an India portal.

AOL, which has 238 million users in the United States, neighbouring nations and parts of Europe, is seeking to compete with rivals Google and Yahoo! in tapping the billion-strong and rapidly expanding global online community.

"We are going to be very aggressive in our rollout," Ron Grant, president and chief operating officer, told reporters in Bangalore, southern India. "Over the next few months you'll see a series of launches internationally."

The Dulles, Virginia-based company has also been given a free hand by its parent to make acquisitions as part of the expansion, in which India will play a "central role, he said.

Grant declined to name the next markets targeted by the 7.9 billion dollar company, which is offering Indian users new-generation e-mail, messenger and mobile services, videos from affiliates Warner Bros and Cartoon Network, news, sports and entertainment on www.AOL.in.

The executive is steering AOL's transition into a global Web services company focused on winning advertising revenue from being a mainly North American entity.

The new e-mail service has been launched in India ahead of North America and boasts unlimited storage space, spam and virus protection and mobile access.

"We are making a powerful statement about the importance of India to AOL and the online world," said Maneesh Dhir, AOL's Bangalore-based executive vice president, international.

"AOL.in is our first portal launch outside of North America and Europe, and it shows how committed we are to this market."

About 45 million Indians regularly use the Internet, according to estimates, and their numbers are swelling as more personal computers go online and mobile- phone users log in through their handsets in the nation of 1.1 billion people.

Six million PCs were sold in the country last year, as many as the number of mobile-phone users added every month.

Online advertising revenue, estimated by Yahoo! at an annual 60 million US dollars, is expanding as companies from biscuit-makers to banks plug their products to Internet users.

"This is a very important -- I would say critical -- market for us," Grant said. "India has the highest priority in our international business."

Google, Yahoo!, MSN and local web companies such as Rediff.com and sify.com already have a sizeable share of the Indian internet market, which the AOL official said is still in its infancy and forecast will grow in the high double digits "for a number of years."

AOL will tie up with mobile-phone companies and also offer local content in Indian languages, said Grant.

"This is only the first step in our evolution," he said of Thursday's launch.

In Bangalore, AOL has a service centre it opened in 2002, a software development facility launched in 2004 and a so-called knowledge centre devoted to business analysis and technology support.

The company has 2,000 employees in the city, known as India's Silicon Valley.