Dotcom: What's Hot!

STATS & STRATS
What's Hot!

Bharti's broadband strategy goes B2B; Star makes a quiet exit from the business; 123India asks its mail subscribers to pay up; and Standard Chartered is gung-ho on online trading.

Team BT

e-trend

The dream at the end of the fat pipe is still hazy. But, one thing is becoming clearer by the day: as far as broadband is concerned, retail consumers are out, and corporates are in. Telecom major Bharti's new company Bharti Broadband Networks has announced that its services, set to roll out by end-2001, will exclusively focus on corporates. The company is setting up a three-tier architecture to provide broadband services across 300 cities.

Q&A: Avnish Bajaj, Co-founder, Baazee.com

First Innings

My Music Files

Of High Tide & Low Grass

As part of the new access strategy, the group's ISP, Mantra Online, will now cater to retail customers only. Bharti Broadband also plans to offer a range of value-added services like VSAT solutions, server collocation, and web hosting.

For retail customers dreaming of broadband, there's more bad news. Star India, the wholly-owned subsidiary of media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., has put on hold its plans to offer broadband and interactive services. According to the company's chief Peter Mukerjea, Star will wait till the Internet scene in India begins to look up again.

e-news

Is this the end of free play or what? In a move that could well inspire other pure play portals, 123India.com has asked its 2 million e-mail users to pay up. ''We are convinced that subscription is a more superior way of keeping our services reliable, innovative, and meaningful,'' says Arvind Kajaria, Co-founder, 123India.

The premium services in place now come in two packages: Rs 599 for six months and Rs 999 for a year. The charges aren't for a plain vanilla e-mail service. 123India's customised package of value-added services includes a calendar service, real time stock quotes, personalised horoscopes, a web-based bookmarks service, an integrated messenger, and a desktop utility which notifies the user of new mails.

If it's a good news, it's gotta be click-n-mortar. Standard Chartered bank is setting up a new company in India for operating an Internet portal, and engaging in online trading. According to media reports, the company has approached the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) with a proposal to set up a new wholly-owned subsidiary.

Is life beginning to pick up pulse in the e-world? Close on the heels of last fortnight's infusion of fresh funds by Global Tele in two portals, the US-based technology solutions provider, Ubics Inc, has signed an MOU to acquire 70 per cent stake in DSF Internet Services, a privately-held Delhi-based company.

Ubics will pay $1.75 million in cash as part of the deal. DSF Internet services, started in 1995, offers solutions in business process automation, e-commerce, m-commerce, WAP development, media streaming, and portal development. Hope springs eternal...

Q&A
''We Were Waiting''

Avnish Bajaj, Co-founder, Baazee.com, talks to BT's Aparna Ramalingam on the auction major's strategies to cut through the dotcom gloom.

AVNISH BAJAJ, Co-founder, Baazee.com: marketing time

First things first. What kind of survival strategy have you in place to sail through the crunch?

Well, as we see it, the competition is minimal and we are increasing our leadership margin in the auctions market. We recently embarked on a marketing campaign to gain maximum advantage of the situation.

Despite your deep pockets, Baazee's cash burn rates are perceived to be high...

On a fixed burn basis our rates are not high, and we are extremely cost-conscious. Our marketing spending has been insignificant in the last 12 months since we decided to wait till the e-commerce market begins to expand. The market has now begun to show signs of life and accordingly Baazee has commenced spending on marketing.

Hasn't charging for listing affected the popularity of the site? How much of your total revenues does listing constitute?

We have started charging for B2C business and plan to extend it to the C2C category in a few months. The B2C charging has only positively impacted the popularity of the site since increased listings have resulted in enhanced choice for consumers.

Your top items (cricket & film memorabilia) are emotional purchases. So where is the scope for repeat deals?

The offerings range across many categories and each category has a different consumer appeal. Products like film and cricket memorabilia are emotional purchases bought for sentiment while the other categories like computers, mobiles, electronics, and automobile segment, are 'practicals'. Volumes in the practicals are significant as the repeat buys for these products are common. The upgradation cycles have shortened over the years and people seem to come back to sell their older models to buy newer ones on the site. The repeat rate in our Bollywood category is almost 60 per cent.

What about breaking even?

We will probably break even by next year. The variable costs are on marketing that can be controlled.

First Innings

This web directory is going great guns, quietly. The latest addition to the Kolkata-based WhoswhoIndian.com is the Indian Leather Products Association (ILPA). WhoswhoIndian.com will provide each one of the 130 members of ILPA, based mostly in Chennai and Kolkata, with a dedicated web page and a search facility.

Hassle-free examinations online. That's the bait Blueshift Inc's Indian subsidiary is offering to educational institutions across the country through its new service SENATE (Service Engine for Assessment, Testing, and E-learning). The company will charge a licence fee on a per student per use basis. If the client is willing to provide his own hardware and infrastructure, the fee would be less as opposed to conducting the test as a third party service provider. While the tests will be given online (each computer will have a jumbled set of questions to prevent copying), the results will be available instantaneously.

Any open source jehadis out there? Well, a Chennai-based asp, enmail.com, has launched enmailXchange, an open source software application, that seeks to bridge the gap between the internal and external messaging systems of organisations. The software complements intranet messaging applications such as Microsoft Exchange Server, Lotus Notes, and Sendmail. Says Karthik Iyer, CEO, enmail.com: ''Yes, there are there are closed source alternatives. But they are overpriced and under featured.'' That's hyperbole, techie-style.

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