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MEDIA REVIEWS
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Cyberwave: start-ups or upstarts
-Serish Nanisetti
The surf’s up in Hyderabad. The surfboards are small, surfing is dangerous, many have foundered, but this does not deter the surfers. The stakes are as high as the surf. Indeed, it adds to the thrill and the challenge in the game. No, we are not talking about the sea and sand surf, but the silicon and cyber variety.
Enter the world of netpreneurs, of wild dreams, of wild ideas and of streets dotted with dotcoms. The cyberworld, where a large number of ciphers are there waiting for the 1 with the right idea. The buzz words are portals (generic, horizontal and vertical), niche segmentation, online everything and the biggest of them all, e-commerce.
Armed with degrees from US, Australian and top Indian universities, these brash, aggressive 25-somethings with hard drive are preparing to hook the new to cyberspace.
Reachouthyderabad.com started by three netpreneurs, in the one-room-two-computer office in grey Chikkadpally area by Maju Kuriakose and brothers Anil and Ananth recount how they set up the site and what keeps them going without a single banner ad on their web page. “We are not interested in making money. Money will come after some time once we make it big,” says Maju. “One day, I was chatting with Ananth, who was studying in Melbourne and the conversation veered round about lack of information about Hyderabad. With so many people like us looking for information, we decided we will start one as early as possible. Money was not the criterion. Starting a website does not require much money or machinery, it is ideas and we had the idea,” says Anil, an MBA from DePaul University Chicago.
“The maximum number of users of Internet are from Hyderabad, that is why we did not think about starting a website on Calcutta or Bombay. But the speed of net access is very slow which is deterring a large number of surfers,” says Anil Babladi. For the e-commerce part, the transactions are taken care of by a partner Y Vikas, who is based in the US.
Mr. Maju Kuriakose smelling success with the city-specific portals, now have plans for a string of portals targeting metros.