It's payback time, folks! The dotcom dream has turned to dust for many a star manager who migrated from stable brick-'n'-mortar companies to fancy pay packages and mega stock options. Today, most options are not worth the paper they are printed on. Worse, pink slips are a reality in cyberspace. ''The reverse-migration has already begun, both at middle and senior levels,'' avers Atul Vohra, CEO at executive search firm Heidrick and Struggles.

When business realities dawn, the reactions are knee-jerk: the shorts-and-champagne exterior quickly gives way to abject surrender. A senior Citibank manager says the bank gets 10 applications on an average every day from dotcommers wanting to come back. So far, the bank has entertained only one: star manager Piyush Gupta, who quit to head the soon-to-be-extinct portal go4i.com, is back in the fold as head of emerging markets in Eastern Europe.

By and large, brick-and-mortar firms put a premium on the learning and risk-taking ability-particularly at senior level. Middle managers, however, may need to absorb a pay cut blow. Says Vohra: ''You are not regarded as a failure, even if your start-up has failed. The experience counts.'' And of course, the option of shifting to a more stable net company always remains. Sanjay Mehta, for instance, resigned from b2b portal trade2gain to join e-mail services company, V Customer.

In any case, there are serious people issues at dotcoms. The average dotcommer employee often does not have executional skills and experience to translate those fire-in-the-belly ideas into attainable business goals. Says K.P. Dutta, hr Veep at Mantra Online: ''Energy and ideas are fine, but you also need strategic and operational skills to sustain and concretise them. Most dotcoms forgot about this mix while hiring.''

Lack of systems is another. At best, dotcoms are melting pots; at worst, railway stations. Underscores Gokul Kaushik, hr Head at Jobsahead.com, ''Even if roles have to be redefined constantly in cyberspace, systems are necessary to do that successfully.'' Though biggies like Rediff, Mantra, and Indya are trying to walk the middle path by instituting flatter structures and aligned development systems, most dotcoms are characterised by complete ad hocism.

The solution? Encourage intrapreneurship through empowerment or set up cross-functional teams to optimise learning. Says Dutta of Mantra: ''Net companies would have to provide careers, not jobs.'' The ones that remain, that is.

-Paroma Roy Chowdhury

JOBS

Monster. The thought of really big ticket competition is giving the jitters to the 20-odd job sites in the country. The sector saw heavy action last year, with a host of new entrants. Thanks to some nifty marketing, the success story of the year is jobsahead.com, which has stolen the limelight from first-mover naukri.com. A shakeout is imminent: sites with strong links to the offline world have an edge. But even if most sites have infotech pickings for now, there's no denying the immense potential.

E-DUCATION

It's a rat race. Everyone from infrastructure providers to coaching institutes, from dotcoms like egurucool.com to companies like NIIT, Aptech, and Zee is jumping on. The possibilities are endless. Are they, really? Poor pc penetration and connectivity are big barriers. As is a fragmented education system. In the short-term, online education needs greater acceptability. Vast opportunities lie in infotech education, and continuing education. Watch out for offline models.

TRAVEL

From CEOs of leisure marketing firms to owners of taxi services, everyone loves travel on the Net. Indian sites, largely aimed at inbound travel, are proliferating at a rapid rate. Content is important no doubt, but it's still a stepping stone to commerce. Most sites follow a hybrid model-interaction with the customer, on the back of alliances with service providers. Revenues, albeit small, are already visible. Shakeout? Sure. With 20-odd travel portals, that's bound to happen.

The Great Indian Broadband Saga
Fat-Pipe Dreams

One calls itself 'India's broadband site'. Another prefers to be more definitive. It's dubbed itself ''India's first broadband streaming site''. The first, Wahindia.com, served up by Punj Lloyd company Spectranet, has laid its pipes all over Delhi. And UTV's Ronnie Screwvala and ISP Win Cable Internet are delivering video via Sharkstream.com to homes in Mumbai.

So has broadband arrived? The number of portals claiming to offer such services suggests it has. There's Subhash Chandra's zeenext.com. Then there's Pentamedia Graphics' numtv.com, which has tied up with Rathinkant Basu's Broadcast Worldwide.

You also have the service providers, busy putting together optic fibre networks in various cities. The more ambitious ones, like BPL and Chandra's Siticable, have an all-India perspective. And there is the mother of all broadband networks, Reliance Entertainment, which hopes to connect 115 cities countrywide. This will serve as the backbone for content in the form of news, learning, music and gaming.

So has broadband arrived? Win Cable claims that its network covers 70,000 homes in Mumbai. At the time of launch, 500 Win Cable subscribers were actually enjoying the pleasure of 'video streaming'. Numtv.com, for its part, isn't much interested in Indian subscribers as of now, preferring to address ''Asians across the global frontiers to tune in for their favourite home entertainment at any point in time and at any time zone'' (so goes a press release). Pentamedia Graphics CEO V. Chandrasekaran admitted that pc and Internet penetration in India doesn't justify providing broadband content in the country. Not yet.

The first casualty: Sukaran Singh's broadcastindia, which is desperately seeking second-round funding. With bandwidth issues holding centre-stage for the moment, broadband content providers are concentrating on Southeast Asian markets. The informed opinion: uptake will be high, but in pockets. Sure, prices will come down. But only when more subscribers join the party. Broadband is here. But it hasn't yet arrived.

-Brian Carvalho

First Person
Riding Out The Storm

Narayan Mani has worked with an US investment bank and Broadcastindia, and is pursuing an independent venture

I landed in Mumbai last autumn on a reconnaissance mission. I met several internet companies, and finally settled on BroadcastIndia.com, a company focused on building a niche in the broadband space. The beginning of the year was stimulating. The net was going to change everything. Our model at BroadcastIndia was simple: take broadband content from TV stations, movie studios, and independent producers, then digitise and stream it. Combine this with quality text content and, presto, you have a value property. Revenues? That will come with traffic, right? That was then.

Our gamble was based on an assumption that broadband infrastructure would come into place fast in India. We would leapfrog the West. Expatriate Indians would be hungry for Hindi music videos and watching the local news on the net. Wrong. A critical mass of broadband users was not in place-not just in India, but just about anywhere. And even if it was, watching a movie for $2.99 huddled around your computer is not a very attractive proposition. Especially, when that movie might take eight hours to download!

We were amply (and painfully) reminded of these facts by every investor we met. By late spring this year, the game was over. Every potential backer wanted revenues...yesterday. Traffic? Who cares, positive cash flow is all that matters. Broadband... Perhaps. And how do you plan to monetise it? It was a crazy ride. The tide changed so quickly that just about anyone working at any dotcom could do was hold and hope to ride out the storm. Many didn't make it. Many shouldn't have. As for me, I'm pursuing a venture that concentrates on the video messaging and hosting space. And yes, I have a robust revenue model in place.

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