|
DOT.COM: STATS
& STRATS
What's Hot!
With two more US companies in its fold,
Rediff seems determined to become the King of the NRI-space. Ericsson goes
for wireless internet, and Railways chants the e-com mantra. Plus, new
dimples on VC cheeks.
By Aparna
Ramalingam, Roshni
Jayakar, & Venkatesha Babu
e-lead
Is content paving way for community in
Rediff's agenda? In his spree to corner NRI eye-balls, the pure play
portal's CEO Ajit Balakrishnan has bought over two more US-based
companies-Value Communications Corp and India Abroad Publications.
Rediff had taken over thinkindia.com,
another US-based portal late last year. New York-based India Abroad
Publications is one of the oldest, largest and most profitable South Asian
weekly newspaper serving the US-South Asian community. Its revenues for
the year ended December 2000 were approximately $7 million from a
subscription base of about 65,000 South Asians. Rediff claims the move
will provide consumers with an unparalleled online-offline experience and
help adv- ertisers target the affluent US-South Asian with a great
advertising and direct marketing vehicle. Says Rohit Verma, Vice-President
(Brand Marketing), Rediff.com: ''The deal is good for the dotcom and the
portal industry in general.''
Value Communications is a privately held
Illinois-based communications company focusing on Net-based marketing of
international phone services to Indians in the US. It has a user base of
about 45,000 with revenues of over $13 million for the twelve-month period
ended December 2000. Focusing on NRIs may make sense for India-centric
portals: the segment has better potential from the e-com perspective
e-news
- Swedish telecom giant Ericsson
Communications is to launch mobile Internet application (MIA) centres
in India. To be set up by next quarter, the centres will provide
back-end infrastructure and support to develop wireless content and
applications based on WAP, GPRs, Bluetooth, and 3G.
- NetPilgrim.com, a site which claimed to
bring 'tech-aware people together by providing best-of-breed service',
is nearing a shutdown. Reports from Bangalore indicate the firm,
backed by eVentures India, is in dire straits. eVentures India is an
incubator JV promoted by Softbank, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp-backed
ePartners, and P.K. Mittal of the Ispat Group.
- Somebody is side tracking. The Indian
Railways is to float an e-commerce subsidiary in line with its
new-found penchant for creating more corporations under its wing. The
proposed entity will be a division of Railtel Corporation, and is
expected to be incorporated by July 2001.
- It's off, finally, and officially. Both
the Bharti Group and Spectranet have clarified that their proposed
broadband deal has been cancelled.
- After Tata Cellular Limited, it's now
the turn of Bharti Group's AirTel to launch WAP services in Andhra
Pradesh and Karnataka. The company plans to launch this service by
mid-April. It has already launched its WAP service, branded Tango, in
Delhi. It has earmarked close to Rs 3.5 crore to boost WAP services in
a big way.
- As the cloud of policy uncertainty on
the Direct-to-Home (DTH) front disperses, India's 'foot-in-all'
behemoth VSNL is looking skywards. VSNL is mooting a neutral platform
for uplinking DTH channels; besides bundling it with broadband
internet. Says Amitabh Kumar, Director (Operations), VSNL: ''We will
provide bi-directional Internet and interactive TV on the same
platform.''
- Café portals (cafedilli.com,
cafemumbai.com, cafekolkata.com), promoted by ICICI Econet, have
merged with Khuljasimsim.com. A new entity called Café Networks
Limited has been formed.
VC watch
- Amidst news of dot.com failures and
consolidation play, it's surprising to come across ventures that are
breaking even. The latest one we encountered is Apnaloan.com. Founded
in February 2000, in the first five months after its launch it
captured about two per cent of the Rs 37,120 crore personal loans
(home, car, and consumer loans) market. No wonder, Rediff has
announced plans to take a controlling stake in the company. Analysts
attribute apnaloan's success to the fact that it's a venture that uses
technology to create operational efficiencies in existing businesses.
Apart from processing Rs 464 crore of loans so far, the firm has
developed back-end technology that can be licensed to other financial
services companies.
- More and more VCs seem to be scouting
for ventures that provide low cost internet access devices or
e-commerce enablers working on alternate payments mechanisms.
Like Smartcc, a company that uses the Net
to enable micro payments. Says Sanjay Anandaram, Principal, Jumpstartup, a
Bangalore-based incubator: ''Among global players, base level technologies
are hot. These include software services and companies developing their
own technology, be it is in embedded space or chip design or networking.''
One example is Qsupport, a venture that provides online user support in
the computing/internet usage domain to enterprises worldwide. Others
include companies developing technologies focused on vertical segments. Or
those that perform e-quotidian tasks like transferring data from a
cellular handset to Outlook Express or from a Palm Pilot to Outlook. And
that is just the tip of the iceberg.
|
|
Laid & Off
Balanced on the biggest
wave, race towards an early grave...The dotcom boom that ended in a
whimper might just be a hyperlink in the larger history of the web.
There's of course the postscript about the shattered delusions of
wannabe e-millionaires.
For some weeks, rumours
were abuzz that CnetIndia.com, the India-franchisee of the high
profile Valley news start-up Cnet.com, was shutting down. And it
did, in mid-March, announcing its merger with ZDNetIndia.com, the
Jassubhai-Ziff Davis venture. But, its staff laments that it was
kept in the dark, till D-day. The smart ones were those employees
who left anticipating a shakeout.
Says an ex-CnetIndia
correspondent: ''A friend SMSed me saying Cnet has closed down its
operations and we all were jobless as of that minute! We had to read
about the details in the newspaper the next morning.''
Cnet maintains that its
staff will be absorbed in ZDnetIndia, but that's yet to happen!
Three weeks after the closure, ex-staffers are roaming around
jobless, hoping that the company will stick to its promise of two
month's severance pay. Says a correspondent who's now job-hunting:
''This might be a small blip in my career graph, but it will remain
with me for a long long time.'' |
|
|
The Engine Of The
Mind
It's still March, but
we're going to break tradition and announce the dotcom that's won
the Mastery Of The Small Touch right now. This year's winner in the
category is Google. The multi-coloured logo of the search-engine is,
by itself, fairly eye-catching, but the company has ventured a step
further by altering the logo marginally to reflect, well, holidays
in any part of the world. On March 10, for instance, the logo was
smeared in aesthetically-placed dabs of colours, and sported a small
pichkari in one corner-it was Holi. A few days later, the logo was
various shades of green to mark the Irish holiday of St. Patrick's
day. Why, there was even a shamrock placed in a strategic nook, and
instead of the usual Google Search message at the bottom of the
search bar, one encountered a smart Luck Of The Irish one. Small
touches, yes, but there's a lesson there in how a plain search-only
site can inject life into itself. |
|
|
1 2
3
|
|
