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May 1-15, 2000 THE NET | |
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One-room Dotcoms One doesn't require oodles of money or elaborate infrastructure to start a dotcom business. A number of interesting sites are being run by people single-handedly from their bedroom or kitchen. By K. Jayadev It's around 3 o'clock in the morning. A young man is sitting in the kitchen of his one-room bachelor accommodation in a middle class locality in Hyderabad, busy furnishing the content for his site. He single-handedly runs a unique services Web site called acharyaonline.com. At about the same time, two girls in the upmarket Banajara Hills area of the city are glued to their PCs in an airconditioned room. They are making design changes for their popular youth site called wowhyderabad.com. In the dotcom business, history and geography are irrelevant, they say. Looks like, space too. There are at least two dozen dotcom firms operating from a single room with minimum infrastructure and manpower in Hyderabad alone. However, this trend is not peculiar to Hyderabad. The entire country is witnessing a dotcom revolution and encouraging the 'hidden entrepreneurial skills' among the youth. According to Jasjit Sawhney, CEO of Net4India, "Around 90,000 domain names were registered in India in 1999 and is expected to grow by 200 per cent during this calendar year." Adding to this statement, a survey points out that the number of dotcom companies will swell to 1,00,000 by 2004 as an increasing number of "old economy" companies are expected to enter the Internet business. The best part of starting a dotcom business is that it doesn't call for much money and elaborate infrastructure. With numerous Web hosting companies around the corner offering solutions for running a dotcom, all one needs is a "brilliant idea" to make the site a "hit". Looking at these possibilities, many have launched their operations right from their kitchen or bedroom. The Building Blocks With the idea in place and a clear understanding on what content should go on the site, young entrepreneurs approach Web solutions companies. Right from domain name registration, Web designing to maintenance and updations-all are taken care of by these companies. "With the number of Web hosting and designing companies increasing, the competition is forcing us to slash the tariff drastically. The dotcoms are getting a better bargain and can run their operations with minimum infrastructure," says Prashant Jain of India Domain Web Services, a Web solutions company. Nadh Thota, a 25-year-old engineer in electronics and communications, started his dotcom company, Mahati Technologies Pvt. Ltd, from his bedroom with just Rs 20,000. Today he owns nine sites and plans to put all of them under one umbrella portal site called indwalk.com. The CEO, who now heads a nine-member team, has shifted his parents to the first floor. The two bedrooms on the ground floor have become his operational area. With just a 486 PC at his disposal, Nadh had two of his friends in the US to help him build the site. Soon Nadh thought he should cover the services sector too on the Net and started a site for students (studentera.com), real estate (myluckyhome.com), automobiles (carindia.com), a career site (indjobs.com) and a portal on tech auctions (india2020.com). All these sites would be integrated into indwalk.com. Similar were the cases with I. Srinivas Rao, CEO of acharyaonline.com, Maju Kuriakose, chief executive of reachouthyderabad. com, Sunaina Raju and Deepti Reddy of wowhyderabad.com and Rajeshwar Rao of tvdailyonline.com. All began humbly and are continuing to operate on a very low scale. Says Sunaina Raju, "That's the best part of the Internet. Everything can happen with limited resources and in limited space. You do not need to have a big setup to make your dotcom click in the market." Sunaina and Deepti conceived a site on Hyderabad, which is lively and funky in outlook. "This site-wowhyderabad.com-is for those who are young at heart. We started off in this room and we both are providing content, designing the pages and marketing the site," says Deepti. While the duo declined to comment about the investment, definitely they were more at ease than their not-so-financially-sound counterparts. A Sanskrit lecturer, I. Srinivas Rao runs his firm from his kitchen even after three months of operations. He hired the services of a Web hosting company for designing and hosting, while he sits in his kitchen in front of the assembled PC and develops the content on the Vedas, culture, tradition and panchangam (astrology guide). Along with idli and uttappam, of course. "For building the site an investment of around Rs 30,000 was required. As for the content, I am virtually not paying anything. A friend, who is also a Sanskrit lecturer, and I have developed the content entirely on our own. My only concern at this moment is how to face the recurring costs that come up every month," says Srinivas Rao, who plans to make acharyaonline.com a community site for NRIs seeking information on muhurats and foretelling. You might encounter a little more sophistication or professionalism when you meet the youngsters who have launched reachouthyderabad. com. The site is more generic in nature and features lots of information about the city. "Initially, I wanted to start a monthly magazine on Hyderabad. I found the whole procedure so cumbersome that I gave up on the idea. I teamed up with two brothers who, like me, were Web freaks. In less than three months the idea took shape. Today we are almost a portal site with a global reach," Maju Kuriakose, the chief executive, explained. The Reachout group pooled in their pocket money and started the site from Maju's sister's house with just one computer. Today they are operating from that same room with two more computers and two more employees. The company is slowly spreading its wings to other places as well with the launch of reachoutdelhi.com and reachoutvijayawada.com. It is planning to have similar sites for all the metropolitan cities within a year which will be linked to a comprehensive Indian portal, reachoutindia.com. Rajeshwar Rao, a journalist, was running a monthly magazine on the local televison industry. After some hiccups, he switched to operating a DTP centre. Then came the Web site, tvdailyonline. com. "Initially, it was very tough for me. My Web hosting firm didn't have proper idea about the medium and because of which I had to spend nearly Rs 3 lakh for just hosting the site," says Rao. The Dotcom Rush "It's time we start encouraging dotcom companies and help them grow in a better fashion. Dotcom is all about idea and the ability to convert the idea into reality. If entrepreneurship is killed by unnecessary obligations like collateral securities for seeking loans, we'd be doing a great injustice to our country. I think nationalised banks should encourage these ventures," says T.H. Chowdary, ex-chairman of Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. From journalists to lecturers to teenage girls, everyone is wooed by the dotcom wave. Though many have managed to set up their sites, none of them are yet clear about the revenue models. However, they are confident that their sites would fetch them money and fame within a year or two. "For people like us in the dotcom business, office space is not at all a constraint. As long as there is enough space on the Web and enough space in our minds for creative ideas, there won't be any constraint," says Maju Kuriakose. What's Prompting? Investment, generally, is not an issue. One only needs just about Rs 20,000 to start a venture. Moreover, there are many people who are ready to invest in the company once the site is operational. "Investments can come even before the site is up and running. All you need is a clear and definite model to run the site," says Austin P.M., CEO, paisapower.com, a soon-to-be-launched personal finance Web site. The site has already got VC funding. Most of the one-room dotcom companies that we spoke to are likely to finalise their venture capital funding within a month. Only when the money comes in that they plan to expand their operations in terms of both-virtual and real space. Get ready if you have an idea. You don't even need a computer; go to your friend's place and start developing the content. Let the site run for a few months; a venture capitalist will possibly come your way. But will your site click? Now that's a Rs 20,000 question. |
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