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DOT.COM: STATS & STRATS What's Hot! The convergence ball is back in F.S. Nariman's court. It's time for nominations, a few awards, and even court cases in the Great Horizontal Race. Plus: muted Mumbai. e-lead
Whither convergence? The initial draft of the ice Bill 2000 has now been referred back to the F.S. Nariman-headed group for re-drafting. The central issue is the role of the Spectrum Manager, the central authority to manage both public and private sector users. Should the position be held by one person, or a committee? And should the regulator control both content and carriage...or is there a need for separate authorities to handle each? And who lays the networks-the network owners or the property owners? Then there's the role of the Communications Commission of India-to grant licences, manage the spectrum, resolve disputes, as well as determine the conditions for fair access to network facilities and service. The GOI says all these issues will be tackled before drafting the bill in the Winter Session of Parliament. It's time for tonnes of nominations, and a few awards in the Great Horizontal Race. Reaffirming its gains in 2000, Indiatimes.com won the Techies 2000 award for the best Indian portal. Rediff.com was nominated for breaking news at Columbia J-school's Online Journalism Awards 2000-no, it didn't win. Then, Sify was nominated as one of Fortune's 10 Hot Global Stocks. Both the NASDAQ-listed companies are at their all-time lows, besides grappling with legalese around pornography via search engines. e-news
e-mood In the city to attend Intel's e-Business Forum, one could notice how muted Mumbai has become. The billboards have been replaced by restless rumours in uncertain times (example: is jobsahead.com in trouble? Or is monster.com tying up with them?) with the scent of fear all pervasive. Survival is the key and scepticism is a given for the dotcoms. The sober mood was evident during the by-invitation conference, an Intel marketing exercise for its 19 partners. With flexible solutions, open systems, and scalability being the buzzwords, it was plain hard-sell to transform corporate India's proprietary systems to work in the internet economy. The import: the guys with the architecture-the servers, network storage systems and software, internet-data centres-are going to make the money. This is business. -Sunit Arora & Vinod Mahanta Ranked third among potential IT destinations in India, connectivity remains a hurdle.
However, even though the city has close to 20 ISPs and over 287 registered cyber cafes, connectivity remains a hurdle. With 63,902 internet connections, the state ranks sixth in connectivity, after Maharashtra, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and West Bengal. Karnataka, for instance, talks bandwidth in terms of 128 mbps, where the all-India figure is said to be in the region of 425 mbps. Compare this with 50 mbps in Andhra Pradesh. Of course, AP still leads in terms of tele-density, with a figure of 3.35 per 100 against the national average of 3.15. "The government is actively encouraging VSNL and dot to allocate more international bandwidth to the state," says J. Satyanarayana, 45, it Secretary, Andhra Pradesh. When asked why Infosys preferred a clutch of other cities to Hyderabad in investment priority, all Managing Director Nandan M. Nilekani said was: "For us the primary consideration in setting up facilities has been the availability of resources." While lower real estate prices and cheap manpower are driving Hyderabad towards it services, the city has touched an inflexion point. Says Col. M. Vijay Kumar, 49, Director, STPI, Hyderabad: "The bulk of software export earnings from Hyderabad are from services." The break-up: 55 per cent from application re-engineering and system integration; 15 per cent from transaction processing and call centres; 10 per cent from ERP and asp-related software, 10-15 per cent from web content development and 5-7 per cent from chip design. Compare this with Karnataka, where Vivek Kulkarni, 42, the state's it secretary, maintains: "Nearly 60 per cent of our total exports are from high-end product development." Karnataka is expected to register software exports of Rs 6,400 crore this year. Hyderabad's 600 it companies contributed Rs 1,059 crore to total software exports last year. This figure is expected to touch Rs 2,000 crore this year. A 100 per cent growth, albeit on a small base, is great news. But Hyderabad has to quickly tackle three issues: the dearth of senior-level managers, the lack of international air connectivity, and bandwidth. Then it can start living up to the hype. -E. Kumar Sharma This is India's first online cross-border venture deal. By online, I mean, completely so. Four months after Krishna Vepa, a US-based NRI, and Duncan Dobson registered their start-up company-the California-based Wafer Solutions Inc, a wafer-shaping technology and chip maker-on fund4idea, the duo has managed to get first round of funding worth $6 million. The VCS: ICICI Ventures and Intel. Fund4idea.com is an e-enabling arm of Erudite Capital, an investment banking firm started by P. Chandrasekar. The website is a neutral market place for funds and ideas, where ideas are registered by entrepreneurs and by funding agencies. At present, there are 25 funding agencies registered on the website with a corpus of $1.75 billion-and 1,000 ideas. Here's how it works: Vepa registered the idea on August 24, 2000. Within 48 hours, P. Chandrasekar and his team screened the idea and gave the entrepreneur an option of choosing three investors: ICICI Ventures, GE Capital, and Citibank. The company decided to go with ICICI Ventures on August 27, 2000. After a conference call on September 10, 2000, ICICI Ventures gave its in-principle acceptance. Then started the due diligence: ICICI issued the term sheet on October 9, 2000, and the disbursement of funds on November 25, 2000. The benefit: there is tremendous saving in man-hours spent per deal. Says Chandrasekar: "Not more than 10 man-hours were spent on the deal. If the same deal was done off-line, a minimum of 80 man-days with 8-10 hours per day would have been spent on the deal." Fund4idea's cut: 3.5 per cent. Not bad at all. -Roshni Jayakar The internet is actually a continuously-morphing genie that is changing the world as we know it. It's a smaller enabler, 19x9x24 inches and weighing 10 kg, that the Hyderabad-based ISP solutions company Pioneer Networks has launched. Dubbed the 'Genie', the box is an internet solution for multi-dwelling units like hotels, large residential complexes and companies. It's a router, remote access server, e-mail server, web server, authentication software and billing server all built into one. All that the genie needs is a phone line for installation. Is it actually a cost-effective route to get internet ready without having to employ a network consultant and engineer? Yes, claims Pioneer's Managing Director, P. Sridhar Reddy, 29: "The costs are cut by around 50-60 per cent for, say, a hotel, when compared to other options to get internet ready." These include a LAN solution (digging the walls, cabling, and installing ethernet bridges at around Rs 30,000 per room for a 100-room hotel); the DSL solution (relatively hassle-free, but involves the installation of DSL modems at Rs 20,000 a piece in each room); and finally there's the cable solution (approximately Rs 40,000 per room for a 100-room hotel). Compared to these options, Genie-which relies on the existing EPABX network-claims that the company incurs a cost of between Rs 6,000 and Rs 11,000 per room. Disagrees Sanjiv Agarwal, 34, Head (Internet Group), Ernst & Young: "My feeling is that alternate solutions, such as DSL broadband connections for say similar requirements of a 100-room hotel should not cost more than Rs 3 lakh." Nevertheless, he feels, the product could get a good market if it is cost effective. That we will have to see. -E. Kumar Sharma Digvijay Singh, CEO, india.com has a chat with BT's Sunit Arora Q. Isn't it a bit late in the day to launch a horizontal portal aimed at India?
What's the USP? We have existing relationships and clients thanks to our acquisition of Multiple Zones India. The site's (pczoneindia.com) e-store for infotech products has 2,000 clients, and an expected turnover of Rs 40 crore in 2001. India.com will leverage these relationships to bring these companies online, and offer them web design and hosting solutions. India.com is looking for a parent, as mail.com wants out... India.com has funding of $50 million, which should keep us going for a while. Yes, mail.com has announced its exit plans. As an incubator, they did the initial round of funding in india.com and have an 89 per cent stake. Some 69 per cent of the company is available for dilution. In a weak market, there is a lot of opportunity for a player to take a stake-and get a great brandname. India.com could even form part of a portal's dual strategy for India. What is your strategy for alliances? We have 23 alliance partners. It's normally better to make your own content. Unless, of course, you can buy cheaper than what you make. We're going to expand the range of verticals, for instance, education. We will also be stressing on personalisation, via Myindia; and then there's games, humour, and so on. The basic premise behind the site will be functionality. But you have a low-key profile... It's good value being low profile. In any case, the hoardings don't get to your targeted audience. We will unfold a TV campaign in time. For now, all I'm concerned about is keeping the cash burn rate down. What about namesake Indya.com? It's all a matter of positioning. We're a sober and serious site. We're not built around attitude. BT relives 1995, a year when the World Wide Web truly exploded.
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It's that long road ahead that stares at
the (once) laid-back capital of the Nizams. In a short span of five years,
Naravaripalli Chandrababu Naidu has transformed Hyderabad to Cyberabad,
shifting tourist focus in the process-from the Charminar to Cyber
Towers-the crown jewel of his Hi-Tec City project. The city has been able
to attract global giants, like Microsoft, Oracle, Motorola, GE Capital and
Ericsson, with many new ivestors keen to enter it-enabled services. A
recent IDC India survey places Hyderabad in the third place, after Delhi
and Mumbai, as markets with the highest it potential.
A. No. Whatever study you take, it's clear
that seven-eighths of the projected Indian internet audience isn't online
as yet. Moreover, we have the best domain name in the business. India.com
wants to be the country's premier internet brand serving up e-business and
e-solutions. We will bring small and medium Indian businesses online, and
drive traffic to these businesses via the portal. We have 1,89,000
registered users.