India has been a major attraction for Wikipedia, the free internet encyclopaedia, according to its founder Jimmy Wales.

Speaking to reporters, James, who is on a visit to Thiruvananthapuram, said he was a big fan of India. "India's IT sector is strong and it has a profound influence," he said.

It was a major challenge for them to explore more scope for Wikipedia, described as the "language of developing countries," in other developing countries, he said.

Admitting that collaborative writing had its own risk, he claimed many random surveys had proved that the errors in Wikipedia were comparatively not much higher than the ones in traditional encyclopaedias.

Wikipedia was the fourth most popular websites in the world, weathering the competition from monopolies, he said.